Chrysalis
by MintFlintee
Summary: It had been the Yondaime's idea for Kakashi to join ANBU after Rin's death. But how could he have predicted this? Entangled in a realm of shadow, chained by his past and a battering fear of failure, Kakashi delves further into the underneath. Minato dives after him. "Even in the darkest of places, still there are things that will grow."
1. Chapter 1

...

 **If you think that I am ruined**

 **I'm not ruined, I am whole**

 **I am fine, not even broken**  
 **Maybe soft-spoken, maybe so**  
 **Although my bones you may have shattered**  
 **It's only matter, it's not my soul**

 **And when you crushed me like a flower**  
 **The final hours but how to go**  
 **I thought you loved me**  
 **The way you touched me**  
 **Your wicked violence I did not know**

 **I thought the father was the protector**  
 **Was the creator but you are none**  
 **Although my bones you may have shattered**  
 **It doesn't matter, 'cause I am whole**

~ "Ana Lama" by Cocorosie

...

 _Chrysalis_

...

Evening darkened over Konoha's Summer Solstice like a bruise.

Danzo grimaced as he took a long draw of sake, elbow crooked against the patio railing, and watched the crowd drift by. The streets below were positively blazing. Some fool had strung up a seemingly infinite array of string paper-lanterns in an erratic zig-zag between nearly every building; which served Danzo's purposes just as well: no patch of central Konoha's stampeded dirt-roads was left unilluminated.

All were open to his perusal. All were subject to-

-the sudden appearance of the Yondaime, belied by his repulsive sunny locks, directly beneath the Root-Founder's perch, arrested his focus. The Yellow Flash sighed deeply before sinking to the wood of a faded, deserted bench. Danzo peered down at the man shrewdly, un-bandaged eye narrowing, and swished a mouthful of sake slowly over his tongue. He allowed a pleasant burn to roll through him, waiting till it reached a clear line of discomfort before finally swallowing.

Nothing more than a looming shadow, he slipped his net of spider-like observation over the Fourth Hokage.

Ever since Minato Namikaze had been elected, Danzo had been forced to relocate several of his classified laboratories, reroute funding for a number of top-secret (possibly illegal) factions and partnerships-all of which he'd painstakingly cultivated through years of deliberate and orchestrated planning-and exterminate a mess of potentially damaging paper trails, most of which only he had full access to in the first place. And all with a falsely optimistic and cheerful smile upon his grizzled face.

Since when had transparency and accountability ever done the shadowed realm of the shinobi any good? As far as he was concerned, that was how graves were plotted.

Danzo grumbled darkly to himself upon finding that he'd emptied another bottle. He snapped his fingers tersely. Instantaneously a bowing shinobi, her face concealed by one of ANBU's pale, moon-faced animal masks appeared by his side, one fist pressed to the floor, the other cradling a slim-necked bottle.

"Just leave it here."

She straightened and bowed, pouring a generous cup of the colorless liquid, before setting the bottle down carefully, bowing again, and then dissolving back into the black night.

"Tch."

Thoughts simmering viciously, the self-professed Shinobi of Darkness tossed back another burning swallow. If only he could find some way to distract the Yondaime... The man was so energetic. Self-righteous. He was-

"-concerned."

Minato was saying, slouched uncharacteristically against the wooden, sun-bleached slats of the bench. His girlfriend, the fiery Jinchuriki with those flashing green eyes and that obnoxiously loud voice had joined him from the vibrant, yukata-garbed throngs. She was curled into the blonde's side, her cheek resting along his outstretched arm. Her gaze was patient,attentive, and deep. Open.

It made Danzo want to swallow a kunai.

"I mean it, Kushina," the Yondaime said after a moment when the Jinchuriki had said nothing, "I'm losing sleep over this."

Danzo's ear pricked with interest. Well, now, perhaps tonight wouldn't turn out to be such a waste after all. Revolting as the two love-swans were. The Root-Founder shifted his weight, trying to dissipate a surge of impatience. What was it? What could possibly be causing the Leaf Village's most esteemed and heavily admired Fourth Hokage to toss and turn?

"He's always been that way though, hasn't he?" Kushina said, auburn brows dipping thoughtfully, "Distant, I mean."

Minato's mouth pursed as if he were chewing something. His azure orbs danced, flitting back and forth over the multitude of faces passing by in the street. Kushina brushed the pad of her thumb over the crease that always seemed to form between the man's blonde brows nowadays. Minato blinked, smiled half-heartedly.

"I'm frowning again, aren't I?"

Kushina chuckled softly, her vibrant green eyes twinkling. Her fingertips slid down to his chin and she turned his face to hers slowly, relishing the blush that rose high in his cheeks. She kissed him smartly on the forehead. Danzo rolled his eyes.

"Yes." she said, her tone teasing but her eyes searching, "You were."

Danzo sighed. Shoved his cup aside and reached for the bottle. He was going to need a lot more than a cup could provide if he was going to spend the night listening to transient, overly sentimental talk about feelings and other such useless, and-Danzo knew-ultimately hollow intimations. How could they stand each other?

"You know sometimes he doesn't even say hi to me?"

Kushina's mouth twisted. It was the look of someone who'd listened to some version of a conversation before, perhaps many times, but felt helpless to offer any lasting comfort. Her fingers rolled the cuff of his white Hokage's coat absently, bunching the red, orange, and yellow flames over the tanned back of his hand.

"I'm the Hokage, for Kami's sake!" Minato said, face falling into his spare hand wearily, "He's obligated to address me."

This was starting to sound interesting. The Root-Founder watched a curious range of expressions slide over the man's face. Danzo raised a brow.

"Oh, you know how he can be sometimes." Kushina tried lightly, "He's always got that nose of his buried in one of Jiraiya-Sama's books. His head in the clouds."

Minato said nothing for a while. Danzo nursed his bottle in delight as the Jinchuriki's reassurance fell flat. This was turning out to be more entertaining than he'd hoped.

Finally, the Yondaime shook his head.

"No, it's... it's not that." he said softly, his hands falling limply to his lap, "Kakashi's always been different. I've known him since he was very young, Kushina, since before you even. It's always been hard for him to relate to others his age. He's so intuitive. Responsive." Minato shook his head, "Sometimes, I've often thought it's like he's so eager to-to please it's as if he's trying to predict my orders before I can even give them... He's terrified of failure. Of not measuring up. Even if it's an honest to Kami mistake, something anyone could have done. He's... It's hard to watch. How he corrects himself... And, after what it did to Sakumo, I can see why."

There was a brief silence, speckled only by the light, pealing laughter of children and the joyful, completely unaware, murmuring of the crowd.

'This village is ready for change in so many ways," Minato breathed, and Danzo struggled to hear him, "but the past hangs over us like chains.'"

The blonde man sighed, leaning forwards to rest his elbows upon his thighs, cupping his face in his hands. Kushina's gentle figure leaned into him, her fingers sifting through the man's flaxen locks. The two were quiet for a moment, watching as a band of children giggled and tore through the street, rainbow-coloured pinwheels and cotton candy clutched tightly in their little hands.

Danzo drew a ponderous swig. A welcome heat had begun to waft through him, rising with his thoughts. It swam and curled about his ears, heady and delicious.

"Hatake..." he whispered into the chill night air.

An emulsified grin bloomed slowly over the man's scarred jaw.

"Kakashi Hatake."

The boy's name tasted better than the sake he was drinking. Something about how the syllables flexed and rolled against his teeth was fascinating. Magnetic.

Surely, surely there was a way for the Shinobi of Darkness to use that for his purposes.

He held the bottle's cool glass absently against his numb lips, allowing his thoughts to drift. The answer was there, he knew, hanging somewhere in the crisp, smoky night air. It was right before him. He had only to grasp it...

"One day at a time, dear heart." Kushina was sighing into Minato's neck, wrapping a freckled arm over her lover's shoulders. Minato nodded belatedly, his thoughts evidently still fastened on the new distance that had erected itself between him and the last living member of his first genin team.

"It's not my heart I'm worried about." the Yondaime muttered.

Kushina frowned. She stood up, and held out a hand somberly.

"Maybe we'll be able to catch him tomorrow." she said, and then grinned impishly, "You can use your new-found Hokage powers to coerce him into spending an afternoon with us. We'll go to Ichiraku's, my treat."

Danzo's furrowed brow shot up suddenly, mussing the bandages that concealed the stolen Sharingan that had been planted-and hidden-within his skull.

That was it.

Minato was laughing, and although the man was only several arms-lengths below him, already the Hokage's voice seemed flatter and more faraway somehow to Danzo. A slow, maliciously gleeful smile stretched and lounged across his down-turned face. Of course. Why hadn't he thought of this before?

The Yondaime allowed the Jinchuriki with the twinkling green eyes to pull him to his feet, and lead him away gracefully into the crowd.

The Master of Shadows snapped his fingers again.

"Yes, Danzo-sama." The quiet voice of the ANBU who'd served his drinks before melted into the darkness as she reappeared beside him, crouching, "Would you like another drink?"

The lights strung between the buildings danced and flickered. Their filmy pink, yellow, green, and blue sides swung dully above the mindless crowd with a staggering gust of cool wind.

"Never mind that, soldier." Danzo clipped, even as he tossed back another sharp swallow, "There's someone I'd like for you to retrieve..."

...

* * *

...

From the burial grounds, the Summer Solstice sounded like a dream.

Airy, tinkling; the loose sounds of happy voices and of food being chopped, simmered, diced, and pounded seemed to reach him from very far away. Someone squealed, giggling as a fire-cracker popped, fizzled, and spat into the night. An unseasonably icy wind rattled through the graves, jouncing the parched leaves of the towering trees that laced the clearing.

Kakashi sucked in air. Something inside him was collapsing. Must have been collapsing. The bald, gleaming face of the cenotoph glared back at him. He felt himself weaving, tunneling. Knees thudded to the grass, but it couldn't have been him because he had been leaping, springing forwards-Rin's body was a limp, heavy weight that gushed, fluttered, spurted, twitched and _burned_ against the crackling length of his arm. So much more real, more visceral than the thrust of a kunai to him now. He thinks that he had even anticipated it; that wild swoop of thrilling nausea, that sharp, broken inhale as he braced himself for the unrelenting plunge into another living creature's body.

"Ka.. Kashi," and she's trying to say his name. His knuckles have burnt through her lungs though, and there's no repairing this. He feels the meat of her squeeze and catch as she tries to draw in air. A staggering downwards roll of surreal awareness slams through his body. Guts him.

And, and he's not even sure if he's in Konoha or if he's _there-_ spine tingling in a primal spike of horror as he realizes that he can feel the swift drop in her heartbeats with every slackening wash of her pulse, like a glove around his wrist.

White-silver strands tumble, whipping over his eyes-both open, only one seeing- as the young man shakes his head. The moon stares down at him through a sheen of glacial light, silent and accusing.

He rocks forward, then back. Choking.

"Hatake-senpai."

Kakashi judders, reeling back. His body assorts itself into a defensive stance, hand slinging back to palm his katana reflexively. He is hidden beneath two masks, but he knows, with a deep ache, that he'd allowed himself to be weak. Open.

Shame flurries through his stomach in a rush of melting heat. Kakashi straightens, bows. His arms feel cold at his sides. His mask is thick, bloated with tears beneath the cool firmness of his ANBU mask. He resists the urge to adjust it.

"Come with me."


	2. Chapter 2

...

 **I dreamt I was a child**

 **Holding a string into the sky**

 **Climbing it till I finally reached the other side**

 **A city of gold**

 **A beautiful noise**

 **A blanket of sound**

 **Covering me**

 **Pulling the sky into the ground**

 **I get carried away**

 **Please**

 **Warm the blood inside my veins**

 **I get carried away**

 **Please**

 **I stand on the air**

 **Hovering high over the Earth**

 **I stare at the star**

 **As she is waiting to give birth**

 **You are the voice that I can hear**

 **And now I can see**

 **I am a photograph of who I used to be**

~ "Gutter" by Paper Routes

...

 _Chrysalis_

 _..._

They rose like a breath; Shibi Aburame's glasses flashed obsidian in the thin light of morning as he bobbed and rolled his wrist, sending a humming cloud of kikaichu swarming, streaming over each other. Through them he could taste the chill of the dew, the parched limpness of Konoha's gently wafting foliage. Encroaching autumn: spice and cloying decay. Though a pale tendril of fog had settled it's bloated underbelly amongst the Village Hidden in the Leaves, it's borders would remain protected.

One thing his clan had never told him growing up was that to be an Aburame was to have one's name signed up for a life-time of bad weather duty.

Shibi's patrol-partner, a young Hyuuga, shifted uncomfortably in the corner of the cramped dugout. Rain fell in a steady hiss, damp tendrils of icy mist curling Seems the Aburame's weren't the only one with a trans-generational obligation.

Shibi grunted. Spat over the balcony. He hated rotten weather. It was more of a curse really,-

-There was a sudden streak of movement below; jarring in it's swiftness. A flash of blinding silver and grey. It sliced through the foamy fluid of his saliva before it touched ground. Shibi's shaded eyes widened.

"Kami!" the Hyuuga was saying, "What was that?"

"Only one way to find out."

He dropped to the forest floor, fingers already flowing and knotting seamlessly. His partner landed behind him at the same moment he sent a buzzing cloud of kikaichu spraying through the leaves after the mysterious, darting figure.

They fanned out before him like a wave, silencing all other insect-life as they moved. Springing forwards, he sped after them. A stay leaf whipped by his cheek, slippery and cold.

"Identify yourself!"

All he could see ahead of him was an infinitesimal rustle of faded brown and black leaves. Whoever the intruder was, he was a fast son of a bitch.

"Halt!" he barked, "By the name of the Yondaime, we will strike you down!"

His kikaichu felt the feather-light press of a gasp through the mist; through them he saw and tasted it. A tiny, shocked inhalation. Clean breath, absent of infection or disease. But, laced with an acidic razor-edge of fear.

And then they made contact.

"Stop! Stop!" The figure yelped, staggering to a halt between two trees. The kikaichu had rapidly ensconced the man's lithe frame in a multitudinous wreathe of clicking, rasping insects. Shibi released them grimly as their target slipped and thudded to the dirt. He allowed them to retreat, but kept them nearby; hovering over their heads like an infinitely-folding cloud that hissed and teemed, clicking with tension.

Shibi's hidden gaze darted over the prone figure, noting the off-white armor and pale animal mask. Cold dread dropped into his gut like a small iron ball. His partner arrived on the scene with a whoosh of rushing wind behind him.

"Anbu-san." The Hyuuga breathed, pale eyes growing wide.

Shibi folded his arms over his chest and stared dispassionately as the slender ANBU whipped back to his feet. He looked to be a young man at best, and strung between one growth-spurt and another at that. The youth was all angles; slim-hipped and gangly.

The Aburame smiled in secret pleasure at the microscopic shudder that ran through the ANBU's body. He watched as the youth raked inky-black gloved fingers through a feathered mess of silvery-white hair.

Others reactions to an intimate touch from his kikaichu never failed to amuse him. He understood most people found bugs creepy, but still...

"It's not everyday you catch an ANBU off-guard." he joked reflexively.

The slanted, shadowed eye-holes of the smirking animal-mask turned and pinned him.

An unseasonably cutting wind slithered through the trees, rattling the husks of dead leaves above their heads in a dry chorus. Shibi felt his partner tense behind him, and he knew that the Hyuuga was unconsciously tracing a kunai with his thumb.

The ANBU's porcelain-armored chest rose and fell raggedly. Shibi frowned. Something here wasn't right...

Another shudder rolled through the masked youth. One gloved hand kept pawing absently at his collarbones and throat. The elite, masked shinobi didn't seem to be aware of what he was doing. He continued to gasp dryly.

"Hey..." Shibi said, "Is... everything-"

"I-I have to see Yondaime!"

The voice of the ANBU startled him. It was choked.

Helplessly young.

"Oh-kay."

Shibi paused. Reeled.

"Breathe, son." he said and then, fully taking in the youth's curious state for the first time-had he unfastened one of his shoulder straps and undone the wrappings on his left leg as some sort of fashion statement?- Shibi stepped towards the young man carefully. The ANBU took a step back, leg-wraps unraveling with a soggy flap in the grass.

"What's happened to your weapons? Supposed to have a katana or something, right? You're short a kunai-pouch there..."

Pale strands of hair shook once, then again in the suspended fog; for a breathless moment the spectral creature before them faded into the swirling backdrop of grey.

The kikaichu-user met his partner's luminous orbs briefly. He read the silent warning. Shibi nodded once, minutely, in reply.

Right. Best to approach unstable potentially lethal elites with caution. Even if they fought for the same village as you.

Black-Ops were, at the sum of it, beasts-and anyone who thought differently would no doubt find themselves at the bottom of a very crowded grave. Or at least, that's what Shibi had been told the year he'd first been promoted to jonin. He frowned.

So, why did he feel an uneasy concern begin to swell in his chest at the sight before him?

His patrol-partner stepped forward. He was a jonin several years his junior who he really couldn't seem to recall having seen before, even in passing amongst the crowded streets of Konoha-and damn-why did it all of a sudden seem to matter to him that he'd never bothered to introduce himself or learn his partner's name?

The young man standing before them was faceless. A ghost. Sentenced by anonymity into obscurity. Who did he have to turn to for help? He was as recognizable as the fog.

Shibi's mouth twisted behind his steep collar. For all the satisfaction it gave him to use his kekkai-genkai to occasionally incite a reaction from his friends outside the Aburame clan, he couldn't help but admit to himself that there was something... _off_ , about this ANBU.

His partner shuffled forwards another cautious stacatto of steps. If anything, the tension and anxiety rolling off the masked shinobi seemed to intensify. The Hyuuga stiffened, halting his approach as the ANBU half-collapsed, panting. The only visible patches of his skin were his shoulders; raised in tiny fear-bumps and slick with terror-sweat.

This close, the kikaichu-user could make out each of the razor-tipped iron claws embedded in the finger-pads of the youth's gloves. He watched as the thin fingers, somehow fragile and deadly at the same time, flexed and curled into the boy's sides as the ANBU folded inwards. It was a startlingly arresting, avian motion.

The boy continued to rasp breathlessly, his slim chest heaving. The way he was holding himself... it was like he was checking to make sure his ribs were still there.

It sent a thin prickle of unease rippling up the Aburame's spine.

"Soldier." he said.

The young man jerked, white-silver hair flipping as his spine stiffened in a startlingly unconscious-looking motion. For a moment, Shibi was reminded of tossing white-caps, of tall, feral-looking waves that he'd seen as a child during a mission to the exotic coast of Lightning Country.

Shibi sighed.

 _Is this what war has made us?_ he mused darkly, _He's little more than a child..._

His partner took a shuffled half-step forwards. Lavender-glinted eyes dancedup and down the masked shinobi, reading his chakra-levels. Shibi wondered what he saw, if the boy's chakra was as ferocious and primal as the energy that gushed from his taut, half-coiled frame.

"What is your status?" the Hyuuga drilled in an even, clipped tone, "Are you in need of medical attention?"

The youth shook his ashen tresses again. Shoulders hitching. Rain speckled over their tense triangle with a hollow gust of wind. Dead leaves lifted and then settled, skidding over their feet.

"No. I-I need-," there as a thick swallow, "I need to see the Yondaime."

Shibi frowned and opened his mouth to say something, but, in a palpable rent of displaced air and mist, the spectre-like shinobi had already leaped away.

The Hyuuga straightened, one fist propped against his waist, and shrugged.

The rain continued to trickle, splashing now more than dripping through the towering boughs around them. An icy breeze tossed the leaves, twisting them on their silver-veined stalks.

"Well... that was weird." His partner stated, staring after the departing ANBU.

Shibi grunted. He was similarly thrown. He shook his head sadly.

"Not our problem. ANBU always keep to themselves... If anyone can, the Yondaime can help him." he stood for a moment longer, gazing into the swirling mist. Sighed. Turned.

"C'mon," he said with a jerk of his chin, "I don't think there's a dry patch left on me."

...

* * *

...

Minato bit the inside of his cheek, fighting to stay present in the deluge of the Council's absent-minded, droning chatter.

Rain lashed the slatted window-panes of the dim meeting room. The only light inside sputtered from a ring of half-melted, lumpy candles nestled in the center of the glossy wood of the low, circular table that occupied most of the room. Steep, desnsely-packed bookshelves hemmed them in on every wall. Even though he knew them to mostly be a collection of flat, grandiloquent medical and financial texts, the newly-elected Hokage suddenly found a burning desire to pluck one off the shelf.

Anything but listen to the circular, gossipy speculation of the Council. Anything.

He was just contemplating the merit of what was sure to be a pathetic attempt at feigning indigestion when there was a sharp rap on the ornately-carved wooden door.

Before any could rise, the door opened, swinging inwards, and the stooped figure of Konoha's Root-Founder slid over the threshold.

"Danzo-sama." One of the council muttered in surprise, "This is a private meeting."

Minato promptly dropped the pencil he'd been twirling between his fingertips idly. It fell with a clatter to the polished floor.

Everyone stared at him.

"Graceful, as always I see..." the haggard shinobi bent and retrieved the wayward utensil smoothly, the uncovered half of his face a study in passivity, "Hokage-sama..."

Ignoring the ghastly impulse to giggle at the horrible awkwardness, the Yondaime coughed and, in a slightly deeper than normal tone, said, "Yes, thank you... And what can I do for you, Danzo-sama?"

Danzo straightened, his solitary flinty eye moving once over each of the council's faces. He brought his cane to a rest silently before his feet. It was an action manufactured to impress.

For all his age and bitter scars, Minato knew the older man to be eerily... graceful wasn't the word.

 _Controlled_.

The fresh-faced Hokage would never audibly admit it, but there was something about the Root-Founder's presence that intimidated him. Danzo wore his opinions like he did his bandages: with unapologetic adornment. Minato was quick to realize that every point, every statement uttered by the revered elder was backed by years and years-sometimes several generations worths-of implicit and more often than not top-secret and virtually inaccessible.

Every point he ever made was backed by what Minato had come to recognize as years and years worth-sometimes several generations even-of tacit military knowledge and operations. To the finest thread. Danzo was the concealed spine of the Village Hidden in the Leaves, it's silent and humming center. He knew each limb, every individual feeler of Konoha's reach. When it came to the muddled history of the Village Hidden in the Leaves, Danzo had almost the whole tapestry in his hands.

"There is a matter," Danzo said softly, "which remains to be discussed."

Out of respect, there was hardly a breath's pause before Koharu rasped an invitation.

The Root-Founder shifted. He leveled the full weight of his attention on Minato serenely. The Yondaime fought the urge to run an uneasy hand through his blonde strands, a nervous habit he'd had since he was a child. For some reason the fact that he was sitting down and Danzo standing-looming even-over him seemed to make it all feel weirder.

"If you would recall, Hokage-sama, a proposition of which I had brought to your attention upon the night of your inauguration." Danzo embellished, "It has been several months since, and it is of the utmost importance. The amendments I have suggested for review by the council. One would think, in such a time as this, that legislation regarding the discipline of our very infrastructure would be at the top of our sagely leader's list."

The Hokage pretended not to notice the condescending slant in the elder's words. Rubbing a knuckle briefly over the growing tension in the center of his forehead, Minato sat back and lifted his blue eyes to Danzo's cycloptic gaze.

"I remember, Danzo-sama. The council is still waiting for statistics from the Bureau to give us their consolidated report before we ratify any changes to military procedure. Once we have a clear idea of the numbers, we'll be able to take some of the steps you've advocated."

"In any case, Danzo-sama," Homura offered with an ingratiating tug of his beard, "The meeting today is for all intents and purposes at a close. We were simply instructing the young Hokage on procedure for his up-coming State of the Village speech. We would be honored, however, if you were to join us for a cup of tea. This blasted weather's got my hip aching."

The council rose from their seats as Danzo bowed. Minato hastily followed suit, wordlessly grateful for his escape.

"Certainly." Was all that was said, and the Master of Shadows stepped back and allowed them all to file past him. He slid into place behind Homura's limping walk seamlessly as Koharu shuffled along at Minato's side.

"Now," she husked, resuming what was beginning to feel, increasingly, like a never-ending lecture, "impression is everything when addressing-Oh my!"

-Someone collided suddenly with Minato the moment he turned the corner. Their head clipped his chin with a loud smack. The Hokage hissed and cradled his face, entire jaw buzzing. The unexpected, and rather dangerous Minato decided, arrival was thrown off their feet with a sharp hitch of breath upon impact. They landed on their bottom hard, wincing on the slick linoleum floor.

"Ka..." The Yondaime took a moment to re-hinge his mandible, "Kakashi?"

The young man, with his wolfish ANBU mask and snow-white hair, was as recognizable to him as water. The Yellow Flash rubbed his chin in mock aggreviance as the White Fang's son scrambled breathlessly to his feet.

"Goodness." Koharu murmured, fanning her breast.

"Next time a little warning, huh?" he laughed, a bemused smile lightening his face at the chance encounter of his old student, "I..."

The words stumbled and fell on his tongue as Kakashi crashed to his knees before him.

Seemingly unaware of his own trembling, the youth bent, pressing his hands and face to the floor. Sweat and a sheen of what could only be the rain petering gustily outside saturated his prone form. Minato couldn't help but notice the hard, defined lines that had taken the place of the youth's soft, boyish frame. Kakashi's black pants, soaked and dripping, clung to him. Minato could hardly connect the wide-eyed, waifish little thing he'd met outside the Hatake's front stoop on that evening, so long ago it felt now, when Jiraiya had taken him to visit his old friend the White Fang.

"Hokage-sama."

Minato dropped to a crouch before his old student, sharp concern tightening in his stomach as he took in his disheveled appearance.

"What's wrong?"

There were no visible injuries to speak of. So, why was the young ANBU's fitted black tank twisted and bunched up under the high-raised waist straps of his plated-armor vest? And the drawstring to his pants. The Yondaime noticed with a faint curl of unease that nearly the entire length of it had been pulled free of the seam. It dangled like a loose thread between Kakashi's knees, limp and pooling.

"Kakashi, what-"

"- _I need you_ -I," the bowed youth stammered, pale strands lifting as he shook his head, "I need to speak with you!" His voice was panicked, rusty-sounding.

The uncharacteristic stutter sent a bizarre pang of worry blooming through Minato's chest. Kakashi never mispoke.

He reached for the boy and then stopped, suddenly, freezing in alarm.

Two rapidly moving figures blurred into grating visibility on either side of the white-haired youth. Before a further word could be said, they had clasped each of Kakashi's arms in a jarring, manacle-like grip. They brought him to his feet with a snap. Kakashi's head rolled with the jostling movement. Minato staggered to his feet in shock.

"Stand down!" he thundered, furious at the unwarranted restraint, "Release him this instant."

The Copy-ninja's sandals stumbled once, squeaking on the wet linoleum. And, the ANBU on either side of him squeezed, gloved fists bearing down with a creak of tightening leather over his wiry forearms. Kakashi stiffened, shoulders rising to his ears in a startlingly helpless motion. Minato clenched his teeth.

"I said... release him."

The Yellow Flash's cerulean eyes slanted, flashing. A thin layer of menace unrolled over the hallway. Kohura glanced at the poised, slender frame of their new Hokage in sly appreciation. Danzo stepped forwards, gliding by the intrigued council and placing himself between Minato and Kakashi.

"Ah, it seems I owe you an apology, Hokage-same." his low voice rumbled placidly. Kakashi flinched.

Minto's hands had somehow become fists at his sides. He whirled on the elder shinobi.

"What is the meaning of this."

His soft-spoken voice was frightfully even, matching Danzo's remoteness with his own natural steadiness. The threat of violence lurked unsaid and hovering between them. The Shadow-Master turned, wooden cane tapping with each measured, pain-staking movement. He bowed, yet he stood so close to the Hokage that the grizzly tips of his black hair nearly brushed the younger man's face.

"It appears to be one of my operatives returning from a mission." Danzo said, a curious expression fighting to be seen and then fading from his scarred visage, "Although, why he is in such a lack of decorum, and why he felt the urge to report to you personally I can't say."

The Yondaime resisted his overwhelming desire to throttle the man.

"That explains nothing." he stated, clinging desperately to a rapidly dwindling sense of control, "Why is he being detained?"

"Sensei-" Kakashi started and then let out a pained exhalation when one of the ANBU buried his hand in the boy's tufty silver locks, jerking his head back. The Copy-ninja's adams-apple bobbed a sleek, oily gleam through the soaked fabric of his mask.

Danzo produced a thin message scroll from his voluminous sleeve. He tossed it easily. Minato snatched it from the air with a snarl.

"This here is a letter from one of my benefactors who oversees the handling of our exports in the Land of Waves. In it you will find a thoroughly displeased, albeit semi-legible summary of events. Though your understanding must be great, Lord Esteemed Hokage, I can't imagine you are aware of your little friend's mission-status?"

Minato said nothing, only continuing to stare harshly back at the man. Danzo's visible eye was flat, expressionless.

"Kakashi, here, is your old genin-student, isn't that right?" he paused, and then, "I have to say, Yondaime-sama, that on behalf of the country I sorely hope that your powers of governance are more formidable than your teaching skills. Tell me, did you make it a rule-of-thumb for your students to abandon top-level missions?"

The Yellow Flash bristled. He looked over the Root-Founder's shoulder at Kakashi breathing heavily in the ANBUs' grip.

"What. Are you talking about..." he ground out. White-hot hurt clouded his chest, and the Hokage's head swam in confusion.

Danzo's brow lifted.

"I think you'll find everything you want to know within the scroll I just gave you." he said icily, already turning to go. Just as suddenly he spun back around, and this time it was hard to not see the perverse gleam of amusement in his un-bandaged eye.

"Or, perhaps you'd prefer Hatake told you?"

"Hey!" Minato winced at the sudden, swishing crack that filled the hall as Danzo's cane whacked into the back of Kakashi's knees, causing him to buckle. The council gasped, drawing together instinctively behind Minato.

Kakashi's normally velvet tone slipped and caught.

"It's as he said, sensei. I..."

Minato's brow drew together in slowly-budding horror as a thin sob slipped out from behind the stoic wolf's mask.

 _Kakashi._

"Go on," Danzo clipped, "Tell him."

And it stung, ringing in the Yondaime's ears even after Kakashi had been dragged away; the defeated way he'd said it. Like he'd already known he wouldn't be able to measure up, and he'd known it would break him to try, but he'd been helpless but to try anyway. Like everything that he was, was a mistake.

Like Minato wouldn't love him anymore...

The Yellow Flash stared after the retreating figures. Rain hissed and lashed, flinging itself against a narrow window. A low, moaning grumble of thunder burst somewhere loudly in the sky outside.

Minato clenched and unclenched his fists, blue eyes simmering with barely restrained tears.

 _"I'm just like my dad."_

...


	3. Chapter 3

**All men**

 **They run then fall**

 **No one can get up**

 **I don't want to grow at all**

 **Time will take it away**

 **Beauty will decay**

 **Our love will fade away**

 **You said you'd follow me**

 **Follow me into the dark**

 **You're gone but I hear your voice**

 **Everywhere I go I hear your voice**

 **You're gone but I see your face**

 **Everywhere I go I see your face**

~"Into the Dark" by Amarante

...

 _Chrysalis_

...

Tenzo watched Kakashi Hatake squirm in his seat through the ivy covering the window of Konoha's hospital break room on the fourth floor.

"Oh, c'mon!" a teenage boy who looked to be not much older than Kakashi, unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, looped a muscular bicep around the boy's neck, "Tell us. What's it like getting arrested in front of the Hokage?"

The wood-user's brown eyes widened. _Arrested?_ Behind the gently wafting branches of his perch, the leaf he'd been shredding slipped from his gloved fingertips. It skated an uneven spiral down through the dry air and skittered to a halt on the dusty path below.

Truth be told, he hadn't meant to spy.

His morning had started yesterday evening upon receiving an "urgent summons". Which, quite horribly, turned out to be just another of Root's "mandatory training exercises".

Nobody had been surprised, as Danzo had been issuing grueling training exercises at "seemingly random" for the past month and a half.

Although, Tenzo grimaced as his shoulder popped audibly when he shifted to a more comfortable branch, he was beginning to suspect there was nothing seemingly random about the selection process. At all. Every night for the past week he'd been approached by a rather imperious looking hawk with a smartly curved ebony beak. Feeling a little timid at the creature's unblinking aurelian stare, and noticing with slight unease how similar the lines of flowing black across the bird's otherwise snowy visage were to a warrior's face-paint; the boy had untied the scroll from it's leg cautiously, at first-only to have the hawk emit a piercing shriek and snap testily at his fingers with it's hook-line beak. Face paling a little at the memory, Tenzo recalled how it had taken all of his discipline not to flinch-something that was as good as a death sentence to such a powerful predator.

And, of course, it had been, predictably, just another of the Root-Founder's summons. Which, naturally, was really just another way of saying painfully grueling, most assuredly lethal training exercise.

It was only now, as the first slanting rays of the distant sun melted through the bitingly cold autumn air, that they had finally been released. Tenzo felt his stomach gurgle plaintively and leaned back against the concealed trunk of the tree, withdrawing a hut-&-fruit protein bar from his kunai pouch.

A good shinobi is always prepared. Feeling, rather pleased with himself, and rather appreciative of the cover the bushy leaves provided, he had tugged the glove free from his left hand. Munching the salty sweet bar, he'd pressed the bare skin of his palm to the rough bark of the tree. Skin and wood had weaved seamlessly together, intertwining him with the silent core of the ancient oak. Breathing deeply he had woven his awareness through the branches of the tree, tingling with the gentle creak of the wind playing against it's upper boughs. Smoothly, as naturally as flexing his own fingers might have been, he'd moved some of the leaf-speckled limbs.

More often than not, when it came to ANBU training, he battled operatives several years older than himself. Occasionally, a high-ranking officer.

With ease, Tenzo had elongated several wooden tendrils, stretching them out towards the shut window. Silently tapping the glass, he'd extended his awareness, giving himself a shifting moment to sharpen it. The, muffled at first but none the less audible, sounds of the hospital break room had begun flood his senses.

Yes, he had decided, a rest had definitely been in order... And, if he _just so_ happened to learn more about a certain frustratingly elusive, maddeningly mysterious shinobi-whom he _technically_ wasn't allowed to interact with-all the better.

He'd been on his way back to his cozy apartment, with it's dim wall lamps and rattling heater, anyway when he'd seen a flash of silver as he flitted by the hospital window.

In something that had become a little bit of an embarrassing tick he'd developed, Tenzo had stumbled to a stop at the first sight of the tell-tale color.

Besides, the Hatake's ears were pink.

Tenzo watched in undisguised fascination.

Kakashi leaned his slim hip artlessly against the edge of a circular, wooden table. Making a low awkward sound in his throat, he shook his head and elbowed his friend in the ribs. Asuma backed off, falling back into a nonremarkable wooden chair easily. Kakashi brushed aside several shocks of silvery hair that'd spilled over his masked face with his pale fingertips.

He was in standard-issued jonin uniform dress. The padded flak of the vest was still a bright forest green; an unspoken signal of being worn rarely. Being a dauntingly coveted shinobi whose skills made him the perfect candidate for the hectic life of an operative who ran missions simultaneously for the Hokage, the village-delegated operations, and, more often than one would expect, Root. It was often, Tenzo knew, very unclear when it came to ANBU and Root exactly where the orders were coming from. The only thing that mattered was completing the mission as efficiently and rapidly as possible.

Tenzo wondered how much Danzo's additional war efforts, like extra training and missions, Kakashi himself was running now.

The older boy certainly did look tired.

There was a fine lavender-blue color ringing the pale skin of the Copy-Ninja's solitary visible eye. A gentle hollow collected shadows beneath it, speaking of silent exhaustion more than the teenager's weary half-lidded stare ever could.

"Maa," Kakashi said, "There isn't much to tell."

"Aw, no need to be shy, Kakashi-kun." A pale-skinned kunoichi with dark flowing tresses and glowing maroon eyes cooed, "We all make mistakes." And then, "Asuma, you can't light up in here. This is a hospital."

There was a titter of laughter at this. Asuma, the sturdy, tanned youth slouched back in the chair next to Kakashi's slouching frame, scowled. He let the cigarette fall from his lips to the varnished wood of the break room table with a blank, combative stare at the girl across from him.

"Attractive."

"Thank you."

Tenzo found himself plucking up another leaf as the conversation swung back to the subject of his curiosity. Tiny, crumbled slivers of leaf began to drift in a steady downwards stream from the uppermost branches of the tree.

"What did your old sensei say? Was he mad at you?"

Kakashi's silver brow slanted. It was definitively hard to identify the expression. The twelve year old ANBU sighed quietly to himself, wondering, not for the first time, the reason behind the jet black mask. That thin stretch of cloth the older boy wore like a second skin.

"Um." the subject of his curiousity blinked, glancing uncertainly at the girl with spiky, eggplant-hued hair,"I don't know..."

She seemed to be grinning in an altogether hungry way. Tenzo chuckled, amused to discover the introverted ninja had an admirer. He may have been a kid still, but he knew how to read the signs.

Or so he told himself.

"Meaning he got his ass handed to him." A scrawny mouse-haired boy with a senbon protruding incongruously from his thin lips, was chuckling.

Tenzo took in the careless cross of the boy's sandals atop the surface of the table, and raised a sanctimonious brow. Things sure were more relaxed outside of Root. There was easy, comfortable laughter. The three shinobi and two kunoichi seemed to all know each other; they moved around each other in fluid harmony as they chewed through the lunches they'd brought.

Except for Kakashi.

He was the only one not sitting.

The silver-haired youth's lashline creased in what might have been a smile. Tenzo saw the faint sparkle of water quivering from inside the plastic bottle clasped casually in Kakashi's fingerless-gloved grip.

"I was given a night's stay and almost half a years worth of community service for my ah... transgression." He sighed with a shrug, dragging a thin sip of water through his mask, "Nothing extraordinary. Hence, my being here in the first place."

"What, no corporal punishment?" the kunoichi with the purple-tinted locks lamented, adopting a decidedly lewd pout, "That's no fun."

The Hatake boy said nothing, simply running a thumb along his uncovered brow in a microscopically unconscious motion. Tenzo frowned. To the four shinobi crowded around the leaning circle of the table, listening to Kakashi's story raptly, the significance of the microscopic gesture might have escaped them. But, even at twelve, Tenzo had, had enough training in interrogation and psychological theory to recognize it for what it was.

Evasion.

"Yeah, Kakashi. What Anko said," the teenager with the senbon jutting from his teeth repeated, whining, "that's no fun."

"Shut up." The suggestive expression on the purple-haired kunoichi's face fell flat. She swung at the reclining boy and he ducked, lips quirking around his weapon. She snatched the dark blue bandana from his head.

"Hey!" he growled, front legs of his chair clipping the hard floor with a snap, "Keep your hands off my hitae-ate."

"This is your hitae-ate?" she turned the impromptu hat inside out, revealing the glimmering sheen of light that rippled and flashed across the metal plate of Konoha's insignia, "You wear it like a clown. No one can see your village symbol, Genma, you idiot."

"Maybe he likes to wear it like that."

Twelve year old Tenzo looked down at the fragile webwork of veins curling out from the spine of the leaf in his hands. What was it about Kakashi's voice that made it stand out like a torch in his mind? Did his voice sound that way to everyone? Pitch lower than most men even, yet lightened by poorly disguised gentleness; the Copy Ninja oozed precocity. When he'd first met him it had seemed like arrogance. Tenzo now knew it to be more of a thrumming self-awareness.

He had a fleeting, altogether bizarre desire to suddenly see what the older boy's mouth looked like when he spoke. How it shaped around his liquid voice... Tenzo shuffled uncomfortably and refocused his train of thought, eyes drinking in the scene playing out before him.

"Yeah." the boy, Genma he was called, swiped his headband from Anko's hands with a cocky grin, "I do. Thanks, Kakashi."

There was a moment of companionable silence where the small band of volunteer-staff chewed on their lunches. Kakashi had only his water. Squinting as a distant cloud rolled back to let a stunning beam of light dazzle through, their silent eavesdropper tilted his head. None of the Hatake's peers seemed to be surprised by this.

 _Perhaps_ , Tenzo wondered, _it isn't abnormal for him to decline food in favor of keeping his face hidden?_

Why?

"So, what's the inside of ANBU's top-secret detention facility look like?"

The rosy-eyed kunoichi with the cascading mahogany hair picked up the old thread of conversation again. She smiled teasingly. Kakashi's eye curved back at her.

Unnoticed by either of them, Asuma's grip on his chopsticks tightened.

"Classified."

"Alright then," Asuma glanced askance at the silver-haired boy, stuffing generous scoops of rice into his mouth, "what was your charge?"

Tenzo leaned forwards as far as he dared in an unconscious move as he strained to hear. As far as he knew there was very little that was actually considered against protocol for ANBU, but he knew that it was ultimately up to the source that the mission came from. With a foreboding chill, the little boy remembered how easily Hatake-senpai had decided to go against orders and help him protect Yukimi. He was sure the older boy had been grinning despite the mask.

"That," Kakashi said tonelessly, "is also classified."

Exaggerated grumbles of dismay and frustration erupted. The girl who he had yet to learn's name laughed, tossing back her hair. Asuma's brown eyes narrowed. He scoffed.

"Right."

The Copy-Ninja said nothing.

There seemed to be an unspoken tension between the two, Tenzo realized, and everyone seemed to be aware of it. The break rooms three other inhabitants all exchanged subtle knowing glances. Kakashi sighed, shoulders slumping even more than usual.

"Don't worry, " Asuma grinned suddenly with a mischievous glint, "If there's one thing we can know about our classified friend here's escapades from last night, we can know this..." He paused for dramatic effect.

"It involved one very unfortunate night guard and a full body strip search."

He clapped the Copy-Ninja on the back proudly, an evil smirk adorning his face.

The reaction was anything but expected.

Tenzo watched with a wide, frozen stare as the the jonin's back arched. His visible eye was scrunched, silver brow drawn in an expression that could only be raw agony; and, in a startlingly responsive movement, the teenager's lithe frame bent away from his friend's hand. Something about the motion had his prominent hips rolling with a snap against the wooden table, sending it screeching as it slid a couple inches to the side.

Kakashi gasped harshly. The sound of his labored breathing was the only sound that broke the heated silence that had settled over the break room. Everyone's eyes were dancing a jig-jag back and forth from the Copy-Ninja's hips to the pink blush that had begun to peek over the edge of his mask.

Tenzo felt a strange warmth begin to glow in his cheeks. _Senpai..._

And then, all at once, everyone sitting dissolved into loud, pealing howls of laughter.

The Copy-Ninja's friends were all collapsed in various degrees of hilarity. Genma's chair suddenly slid and then swooped out from under him, sending him crashing to the floor on his back with a girlish shriek. His senbon whirled, glinting for a breath of a moment in midair before plummeting back down with a fateful stab.

"Ow..."

The young man didn't get up. Tenzo's eyes widened in shock, but the boy had fallen out of eyesight.

"What was that?" the overly-inquisitive, Tenzo thought, kunoichi named Anko guffawed, "Kami, Hatake. Keep your arousing flash-backs to yourself!" And then, so quietly to herself only Tenzo's super-sensitive wood-jutsu picked up on the miniscule vibrations, "I almost lost my ovaries there..."

The other kunoichi giggled again, sharing a bemused glance around the hand covering her smile with Asuma. The tanned boy's face broke out in a poorly disguised smug look.

"What?" something in Kakashi's uncovered eye looked horrified, "I didn't-Asmuma, you..." He stopped, coming to a blushing end. Tenzo could feel the humiliation rolling off the older boy's tense shoulders and downturned gaze in waves.

Why were Kakashi's friends laughing?

The twelve year old huffed amongst the upper branches of the tree outside, dry leaves crumbling in his numb fingers. He felt blind-sided; stumped, reeling. No, furious.

Didn't any of them understand what it meant to be punished by the organization? The backbone of Konoha... There was nothing outside the reach of it's disposal.

Kakashi was standing all of a sudden. His arms were stiff at his sides, somehow accentuating the jagged empty spaces between his wiry arms and slender body.

"Was it everything you'd hoped it would be? Everything Icha Icha promised?" Genma piped deliriously from the floor.

Asuma grinned at the standing shinobi, evidently pleased with the horrific track the conversation had taken.

The kunoichi were still giggling, rocking forwards and back, clapping their knees in silent hilarity. The one with the layered, purple hair snorted.

"Oh my god, that's right!" she exclaimed and then leered, brown eyes cutting a definitive slide up and down the Hatake's taut body, "You're a regular perv! I bet you've just been waiting for the day to live out that fantasy."

Tenzo nearly fell out of his tree, a rush of vertigo and heat wafting through him. Was this what friendships outside of the foundation were like? Tenzo regarded the smug countenance of the girl with the plum strands. She was looking at Hatake-senpai in such a way he couldn't help but wonder if she possessed some special jutsu designed to see through clothing.

Kakashi opened and then closed his mouth, seemingly at a loss for words. Sweat had begun to bead the fine rise of his uncovered temple. His grey eye was bright. Mortified.

Twelve year old Tenzo wondered briefly if the mysterious boy who'd spared his life two years ago had been subjected to a search. The imagined scene unfurled in his mind before he could stop it. A silently obedient young man stood, half-slatted in darkness, with his head ducked, knees locked but hands open and awkward by his hips-as two broad-shouldered men in snarling animal masks shoved him.

Tenzo shook his head, stomach dropping with an unsettling feeling like splintering ice, and curled in on himself slowly. He hunched among the dying leaves.

Nothing about this made him feel like laughing.

"What I wanna know," the senbon-user croaked, chuckling from the floor, "is what turned him on more, getting his undies ripped off or having his mask taken?"

Asuma snorted and spewed soda from his nostrils. It landed in a glistening sheen all over Anko's stunned face. She twisted in her seat, pedaling Asuma's shins with her feet under the table and squealed. Kurenai giggled helplessly, clutching her stomach.

"Baka!" the purple haired girl steamed, "You got it all over me."

Kakashi said nothing. He simply stood, staring flatly at the scene before him. An unreadable expression had rearranged itself over the uncovered sliver of his pale face. Tenzo read the slump in the older boy's shoulders-and was unable to identify the hollow, nameless tug that plucked in his chest.

The Copy-ninja's half-gloved fingers dipped. They buried themselves quietly in his pockets. The teenager blinked once and then looked down at some invisible point to the left of his feet.

He turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

Silence filled. The startled faces of his peers stared after him.

"Geez." Genma mumbled as the door swung to a dull close behind him, "Was it something I said?"

Tenzo watched, too dismayed to move, as the rest of the hospital's volunteer-staff continued to discuss the Copy-Ninja in his absence. He listened intently, heart pattering somewhere in the back of his throat. _What?_

Fleetingly, he remembered the sharp about-face Kakashi had shown him the last time he'd seen him. How it had taken a few seconds for Tenzo to realize that, that was all he was going to get for a goodbye. His child's brow crossed, Tenzo struggled with his disappointment.

"He's just shy." The kunoichi with the eyes like glowing embers was saying, tearing the crust from her sandwich thoughtfully, "I'm sure he wears that mask for a reason, you know. And," she said with a half-buried laugh, "you should know better than to try and embarrass him, Genma. It'll just make it harder for him to open up to us. "

"Nonsense." Genma's hand flipped airily back into Tenzo's line of vision and then fell, "I pick on him because he secretly likes it. Makes him feel like part of the group."

Kurenai rolled her eyes, but smiled.

"Shy?" Anko was raising an eggplant-hued brow, "Kurenai, the man reads porn in public. There is _nothing_ shy about that."

Everyone laughed. Except Asuma, who had set down his half-finished bowl of rice, looking regretful.

"So? That doesn't mean shit. Everyone and their dog knows Kakashi's secretly a robot."

Tenzo wondered at the edge of anger he heard in the teenager's grumble. It spoke of frustration and something else, something deeper than pity that bordered on the grim and disconsolate.

He realized then that Asuma must be feeling bad for instigating Kakashi's ribbing, but unsure what to do about it. Although, now that his competition for Kurenai's affection had left, something in his posture had relaxed, loosened.

"No, no I think Anko's got a point." Genma rasped in agreement from somewhere beneath the table, "Reading porn in public is like a green light."

"Thank you!" Anko said, clapped her hands and pointing to the space where Genma's chair should've been, "Seriously. The guy's got to have some clothing kink or something. Probably just waiting for someone to put it all together and read the signs."

"And do what?" Kurenai's fine brows raised. Asuma glowered.

Anko returned her gaze, a feverish heat in her brown eyes.

"Why punish that unjustly fine Hatake ass of course."

Asuma groaned. He rocked back in his chair and ran a thick palm down the front of his face. Rolled his eyes sniffed, and then plucked his abandoned cigarette from the tabletop, tucking it smoothly back behind his ear. He fixed Anko with an unimpressed stare.

"He left because you were being a creep."

The group dissolved back into laughter at this, Anko shrugging as if the accusation were one she'd heard before and didn't see the merit in denying.

"He's not good with the spotlight. Better in the shadows..." Asuma said softly then, almost to himself, a distant and puzzled look crossing over his face.

Sitting alone, accompanied by only the haze of the brazen sun and the sliding flutter of shadow that it cast, Tenzo felt himself grow chill.

 _Better in the shadows..._

"What did you say?" Kurenai's arched brow's drew together and her rust-colored gaze skated over Asuma's brooding visage.

Anko's fierce look lessened. She regarded the Sandaime's grandson with an expression that could have been sympathy or reluctance. Something unsaid, some undiscussed tail of history seemed to hang over them.

"What?" Asuma seemed to return to himself then, shaking his head, "Oh. Nothing, it's stupid, I just remembered something my ojiisan said once."

"What. About-" Genma made a sound like he was flailing and then stopped with a hiss, "Kakashi?"

Asuma leaned back, tilting his chair, and cast a cautionary glance at the closed door behind him. Checking to make sure Kakashi wasn't going to come back, the twelve year old wood-user realized. Tenzo shifted in his crouch, joints popping. He'd never taken the time to stretch after training this morning, and now his legs were beginning to cramp...

"Remember that string of attacks along our border with Ame last month? How nobody could trace anything back to the Iwa shinobi who'd infiltrated as refugees?" Asuma recalled. Kurenai nodded and Anko settled her chin in one palm with a rapt, albeit somewhat uneasy expression. Genma remained where he had fallen on the floor, out of Tenzo's range of vision.

"Yeah?" Genma implored, voice sounding strained.

"Well," the Sandaime's grandson sat back in his chair and crossed his leg with his ankle, brown eyes somber, reflecting, "it was this huge problem, right? We had a bunch of people rioting to close the gates, latch up the windows tight, and not let anymore foreigners come in. Ojiisan was grouching practically the whole summer about it, trying to bring it up with the council and find a way to take care of everyone. It was such a matter of contention he couldn't get any legislation pushed through. But something had to be done, didn't it?"

'Remember how one day, the attacks just stopped?"

The three chunin were listening raptly. No one said a word so, after a beat, Asuma continued.

"That was Kakashi."

A shocked silence drifted through the cluttered break room. Tenzo rocked, and had to snag the claws of his ANBU gloves deep in the tree's bark in order to keep from falling. He could recall that day like it was yesterday. Having been ordered to the front lines for the third time that season to investigate that very string of attacks himself, he supposed it made sense that Konoha had, had multiple operatives on the lookout.

Had Kakashi been right there the whole time? Working alongside him silently?

"This probably isn't something I'm supposed to be talking about." Asuma said, glancing at the navy material of his pants, "But, I remember it took all of three seconds for ojiisan to decide who he wanted to plant on the inside... Kakashi's been hiding behind a mask his entire life." He said, taking the cigarette from behind his ear and rolling it between his forefinger and thumb, "It's what makes him so versatile. No one can tell what he's thinking."

No one seemed to know what to say to that.

Kurenai bit her lip, Genma was silent, and Anko frowned. Tenzo thought about the silver-haired shinobi, and wondered if anyone really knew the jonin at all.

After a somber lull of moments, Genma spoke up.

"Hey, uh guys? Could someone pull the senbon out of my shoulder? "

"Imbecile." Anko breathed, but, with an exaggerated roll of her eyes she slipped from her chair to check on their fallen comrade.

Tenzo straightened.

His mind was churning, eroding under the weight of all the questions this new information warranted. He rubbed at his eyes roughly, the skin around them feeling hot and itchy.

Ever since they'd parted ways two years ago- _I didn't encounter Orochimaru. Nor did I encounter a strange clan... Nor someone from the Foundation-_ he felt that same, familiar pang of nonsensical hurt he'd felt then as his thoughts were shattered by the surfacing memory of Kakashi's final words to him.

Despite knowing that their dealings with the Iburi Clan had been illegal, and that they had to act like it'd never happened, Tenzo could still recall the crush of loss he'd felt as he'd watched the older boy's retreating back become a tiny, distant speck along the dusky orange-lit horizon. For some dumb reason, somehow within the short time that they had tangled and clashed deep within the secret hideout of the Iburi clan, part of him had grown accustomed to the other's presence.

 _Trusting_ , Tenzo realized. He'd come to trust in the teenager's artful silences, the easy, sinuous grace of his movements, the jarring bewitchment of his anomalous stare; eyes the warring colors of blood and stone. The savage split of scar tissue that roped it's length through the fine white-silver hairs of the left side of his face uncovered by the murky blackness of his mask.

All had permanently ingrained themselves upon the backs of Tenzo's eyelids.

He stretched out his shoulders with a sigh, feeling very much his age and not a little lost. Doe-brown eyes glanced back into the hospital break room one last time, searching without meaning too.

Somehow, even though it went against common sense-and self preservation even-the young Root member found himself wishing that the Copy-Ninja had seen him.

As if just that tiny glimmer of acknowledgment could disperse the shadows that thoroughly enshrouded them both...

He bounded from the treetop with a springing leap and, just before disappearing into Konoha's incongruous skyline he heard a thin voice mumble.

"Hey, uh guys? ... A little help?"

"Genma, you idiot."

...

* * *

...

Kakashi winced as he lowered himself into the low swivel chair, taking special care not to let his spine brush the fuzzy plush of the backrest. Splayed out in a mostly collapsed stack across surface of the scuffed desk before him, pale manila folders fanned out in an intimidating spread.

"Hurt back?"

A gruff, albeit feminine voice startled him. The Copy-Ninja spun around, chair wheels emitting a high-pitched squeak as they twisted over the linoleum. Standing in a relaxed power-stance, closed fist propped against her hip, twin red stripes glowing like bloody tear-trails the length of her cheeks; a women with turbulent nut-brown hair regarded him.

She looked unimpressed.

"Inuzaka Tsume."

He stared up at her for a moment before attempting to rise and bow.

"Hatake Ka- -"

Fiery pain cracked over the thin skin of his back as his shirt caught on the scabs hidden underneath. He gasped. Tsume rushed forwards, clasping him round the elbow before he could fall. Kakashi's brow knitted, sweat beading along his temple. She gently lowered him back into his seat.

"What are you doing, coming in for volunteer-work like this?" She snapped. There was something elementally furious, animal-like about her pinning stare.

"I..."

Wide-eyed he glanced about quickly, desperately hoping that nobody would walk in on them. Before he could say anything though, the older woman had cuffed his bicep in a smarting grip. Kakashi's uncovered eye widened.

"Alright then," she barked, jerking him back to his feet by his arm, "you wanna play hero? Fine."

There was a shallow pause as she waited for him to say something and he missed his chance.

"But, as we are in a hospital," she continued, pupils that he now saw to be hardly more than vertical slivers flashing, "you'll be playing hero with _all_ injuries treated."

She began to drag him bodily from the room.

The heels of his sandals skidded noisily over the interlocking squares of cream, mint, yellow, and green floor tiles. Alarm and a razor-thin undercurrent of some wordless terror sparked inside him. Kakashi, now suddenly quite eager to be walked in on and discovered-if it meant a patched rescued from the clutches of the unsettlingly strong woman-whipped his head around but found that they were still very much alone. She tugged him out of the filing room.

Still encircling his bicep in a manacle-like grip, she marched him swiftly down the hallway. The teenage Hatake blanched.

 _What if she..._

He made a caught, upset-sounding noise without meaning to. Instantly he cringed, blushing from the tips of his ears to what felt like his toes as she stopped, glancing back at him in sharp alarm.

"Hey..."

Tsume paused. Only an inch or so taller than the rapidly growing youth, she glanced down at him as if fully looking at him for the first time. Something in her gaze seemed to softened.

She released her crushing grip on his arm.

"Hey," she said again, "Woah. Calm down."

Kakashi swallowed dryly. He hugged himself and then stopped, sweaty palms dropping the instant he caught himself. Calm? He was calm, he-

Was that him breathing in a frightened panic?

The simple strangeness of having someone he'd never met before touch him was enough to put him on edge. That was all. He never really let anyone touch him anyways. He couldn't stand the _closeness_ of it. Which is why-

The Copy-ninja shook his head, feathered strands of silver tossing fractionally. No.

No, it had nothing to do with the mission he'd... failed. Because, he reassured himself automatically, that was over. Done. He'd paid the price, been allotted his punishment. There was no reason for him to keep thinking... But, uselessly, like trying to run through mud, his thoughts eventually panned back to the events of last night.

The nature of that mission had been top-secret. He'd known that from the moment the mission scroll had dropped into his lap, after the departing shadow of one of Danzo's exotic mail-couriers flitted by. It had been remarkably light.

The higher the mission rank, it often seemed, the less information was provided... When he thought about, and he'd been helpless not to-thoughts rubbing together like the sandy grind of two stones-he still didn't really understand what'd happened... What he'd done wrong...

There was an abrupt, loud snap in front of his nose. Kakashi was able to successfully smother a flinch.

"Kid, "Tsume said, though her expression had grown vaguely worried, "Where are you?"

A tired-looking, drooping eye-lid lifted. Kakashi met her gaze for an instant, and then looked away.

"Sorry."

He ran hand through his tousled snowy locks. He wished fervently that she would leave him alone. He fought the urge to move nervously beneath the absorbent, prying flash of her eyes.

"I know you..." she said recognition dawning suddenly on her face, "You're Sakumo's boy." A hint of sadness colored her tone as her voice lowered.

Kakashi said nothing, refusing to look at her. Perhaps being unable to.

He'd learned long ago it was best not to encourage this train of discussion.

She said nothing for a while. Then.

"Sorry if I upset you." Tsume laid a gentle hand on his wrist, and didn't seem offended when he drew back reflexively, "C'mon, let's take a look at that back."

Surprising himself, he allowed her to lead him into a room just behind him. He turned as she moved, unconsciously protecting his back in a gesture he was sure she noticed, but couldn't fully stop himself from doing.

She paused by the door, flipping through a thick ring of keys.

"I actually work at the Vet down the street." She explained, "but I'm good friends with the Chief of Medicine and I like to volunteer on the weekends, so," she jingled the cluttered keyring, "I've got full access. Step on inside and take a seat."

The Cop-Ninja ambled slowly into one of the hospital's many examination rooms as Tsume flicked the yellow lights on overhead with a blinding flash. Casting an apprehensive glance to the raised, lumpy medical table in the center of the room, Kakashi wandered three paces into the room and then stopped.

"Go on, sit down."

She motioned to a low stool set up against the faded off-white wall, next to a squat desk with a gnarled old-looking chair.

When he continued to do nothing but stand awkwardly, hands thrust deep into his pants pockets, and look around him, she sighed. A look like she might be getting herself into more trouble than it was worth and she knew it crossed her face. She spun the antique wooden frame of the desk chair in a sharp pirouette and settled herself, long legs splitting to rest, half-bent against it's sides as she scooted to the edge. Pulling the wheeled little stool out to a spot directly before her, she patted it's cushioned surface smartly.

"Don't give me that look. You brought this on yourself coming to a hospital concealing an injury." and then, in a gentler tone, "It'll be over, and all taken care of, before you know it. Lickity split."

She grinned, lips stretching crookedly as one side split higher than the other. Kakashi sighed. He looked down at his pale toes peeking out from his sandals, rocked back on his heels.

"Lickity split." he said, voice low and nervous, and then drew a deep breath.

He turned and started to lower himself, but froze, spine attempting to jump through his skin, when she spoke.

"Take off the vest."

 _"Take off the mask."_

 _The aquiline blue lines of the ANBU's mask, dashed in the sleek lines of a heron, were at odds with the man's hulking, boulder-like frame. The shadowed eye-holes stared down at him expressionlessly._

 _"Mask. Off." the Heron (as Kakashi had come to thinking of him, since no names were offered or exchanged since the moment they'd all set out this morning) growled, "Now."_

 _The distant sounds of the harbor filtered through the pocked, ramshackle boarded walls of the nondescript warehouse they'd arrived at. Standing directly across from him, next to their mammoth-like mission captain, stood a greasy-haired man, dressed in a loose, pale-blue cloak better suited for the crushing humidity of the region. He had a very rotund, protruding pouch-belly, and an overabundance of proudly displayed chest-hair that curled darkly over the open clasps of his collar._

 _Root's import-connect. Planted by Danzo himself in the Land of Waves. Kenshin-san._

 _Kakashi felt the man's bleary eyes slide over his body in palpable dissection. He raised his gloved fingertips to the smooth, flowing curves of his Hound mask._

 _Hesitated._

 _"Soldier."_

 _The Heron's voice was low, rocky. Laden_ _with unspoken threat._

 _All of a sudden, Kakashi became pressingly conscious of the weight of the other ANBU watching from where they were lined up behind him._ _Already having been_ _ordered to take a step forwards, singling himself out, he quailed at the prospect of being the only one revealing his face._

 _Why? Where was the information, or export they were supposed to have brought with them for the exchange? And, when did they turn a spotlight on him?... Kakashi blinked behind his ANBU mask, stiffened. Debated with himself. Decided._

 _The sound of the hard-plastic of his ANBU mask unfastening was obscenely loud in the tense, poorly-lit storage room. He lowered it slowly to his side, dark eye flitting around uncertainly as it was exposed._

 _Kenshin-san scoffed._

 _"What a gyp." he crossed a pair of equally hairy arms atop the bulging protrusion of his stomach, and glared at the Heron, "I do several months of espionage for you guys, stealing financial reports and crossing my superiors every which way, and you have the gall to pull this shit." He gestured at Kakashi, clearly offended._

 _"Uh." Kakashi said, at a loss, "I can put it back on?"_

 _A poorly hidden grin curdled the man's cheeks at this. They had the pockmarked consistency of old porridge. Red, beady eyes flickered, cutting another probing sweep down and then up_ _his front. Kakashi's eye darkened._

 _"He's got a mouth at least, or something like one for all you can tell." he grumbled._

 _The Heron crossed his arms, tilted his head in apparent dismay._

 _"Why, Kenshin-san." he said flatly, "You dishonor us. Look at the impressive selection we've brought for you this time."_

 _Kakashi's sandals shifted on the dusty concrete once and then stilled. Selection? This time? The line of ANBU standing at attention behind him didn't move a muscle. They all got the same mission prompt, right?_

 _"Before I accept your offer I require a thorough inspection. To make sure everything is," the Root-connect let out a fluttery, moist-sounding breath, "up to standards..."_

 _Swinging his attention back to the men in front of him, Kakashi noticed with dismay that Kenshin was still grooming him with his eyes, steepling long and incongruously reedy fingers against his lips in silent contemplation._

 _One of those prickling, wave-like shifts in his awareness fell over him then. An instinctual narrowing of his perception, a zoning in on the peripheral, and a drawing in of all the infinitesimal multi-faceted details that made up the intricate tapestry that was a shinobi's reality. A sort of sixth sense that ebbed and flowed about him in a nearly palpable cloud. One that he could mask on command._

 _He'd heard different words for it: killing intent, qi, the bloodlust. For Kakashi it was a physically manipulable energy that stemmed from the pulsing center of his inhuman will. He wasn't really sure why, and at the young age of sixteen hardly brewed on the subject, but he had been told numerous times that his was sublimely chilling._

 _And it was screaming at him now to run. Or to release the thin band of control he had it leashed with; fight. Something._

 _"Of course you do..." Heron said dryly. The man seemed agitated. He stepped from side to side before pivoting out of the small bubble of light. There was a sharp, spitting sound and a wet, resounding slap. Heron swung back into the spotlight, mask firmly back in place, and shrugged before gestured sarcastically._

 _"Be my guest."_

 _Kakashi automatically slid into a defensive stance-which for him came off as more of a disinterested slouch and vaguely puzzled look than anything._

 _He stepped back and shouldered the ANBU who had been standing in line next to him companionably, hands slipping into his pockets. He was only able to get the top half of his fingers in, but pretended not to notice._

 _"Am I missing something?" He blinked. The personification of nonchalance._

 _The Root-connect said nothing for a moment, apparently trying to digest him with his eyes, and then._

 _"That's good. Hiroshi-sama likes it when they're feisty."_

 _Heron's mask dipped briefly out of view, and Kakashi guessed he was rolling his eyes behind his mask. The man's arms were still crossed when he stepped back into the glaring circle of light._

 _Kenshin took a drawing step towards him. Then another._

 _"Disarm him."_

 _Rough claws grabbed him from behind._

 _Too startled to say or do anything, Kakashi gasped as his fellow ANBU jostled and pawed at him, gloved hands rifling up and down each of his arms and legs, the length of his body. His katana was torn from his shoulders with a yank, it's thin strap catching him momentarily in the face with a stinging scrape that knocked his head back. He was twisted in a half turn, first to the left, then right as his kunai pouch, and an assortment of hidden shurikan and knives were snatched from his person._

 _Once they'd all been removed he was released, stumbling forwards several steps from the force of their shove. He landed on his elbows and knees, metallic armor plates along his forearms cutting against the concrete in a transient shower of sparks as he skidded. Kakashi started to scramble to his feet and then froze, one hand still on the floor. His spine shuddered as a bristling of pins and needles rolled down him. The Copy Ninja looked up slowly._

 _Kenshin's puddled blue silk robe was less than an inch from his nose._

 _Kakashi sprang backwards._

 _There was a low, rapacious chuckle. Kakashi's head snapped up minutely and he saw Heron shaking his head to himself behind Kenshin._

 _The discomfiting Root-connect swept a hand through his brown, oily locks in an eager, quick motion. All of a sudden the pulse of Kakashi's heart decided to make itself known in_ the _front of his throat. He was painfully aware of the visible rise and fall of his chest, how it strained against the straps of his military-grade armor-plated vest, and of how Kenshin was watching each and every microscopic movement._

 _"Heron-san!"_

 _Kakashi yelled, his voice raising in the cadence of a soldier addressing his superior officer. Kenshin took another step towards him._

 _"Shut up." and he backhanded Kakashi across the face. It was a slow, easy to evade blow, but the sixteen year old was so shocked by what was happening he didn't think to react._

 _The Hatake gasped, staggering, his solitary grey eye widening with confusion. He lifted a hand absently to his cheek._

 _Kenshin moved. And the certainty of it, the simple confidence of the motion was enough to trick Kakashi's finely honed shinobi senses-branded into him through years of discipline and training-into obedience._

 _The older man untied the drawstring to Kakashi's pants._

 _Holding his breath without fully realizing it, the sixteen year old felt with vivid keenness his hips being jerked and turned with tortuously slow indulgence as Kenshin pulled the end of the string. The man's pudgy, whiskery face was slackened in the look of one who was slowly unwrapping a present._

 _Kakashi's stomach knotted._

"Stop!"

Kakashi cried out, his voice ringing out into the hospital hallway loudly, and jolted, lurching away from Tsume's hands. He shot off the stool, sending it skating in a skittish whirl across the examination room floor.

She stared back at him, arched brows attempting to touch her hairline, as he backed into the desk, knocking several papers to the floor, and then thumped his head against the unforgiving corner of a hanging cabinet.

He made no noise of hurt, only a momentary squint of pain, and, several shoulder-raising shallow breaths later, he wheeled around to face her. His half-gloved fingertips were splayed and open, ready at his ribs.

Tsume's hands were still outstretched from where she had raised them to help the teenager take unzip his jonin vest. She lowered them to her thighs slowly, and smoothed what she hoped was a calm, reassuring expression across her face.

"Easy, kid." she said, "I'm not going to hurt you."

And then, when her words seemed to have the opposite effect she'd intended, she added.

"You kinda zoned out there. Everything okay?"

Still panting, every nerve in his body hypervigilant with tension from the pads of his fingers to the span of his chest, Kakashi struggled to focus on her. Was it just him or were the walls of the room leaning in?

Shadows curled smokily in corners of his vision as it tunneled and skated against his control. What felt like an iron metal band had somehow sealed itself across his chest, making it impossibly hard to breathe.

"No, no." the spiky brunette snapped suddenly jumping to her feet at something she had seen in Kakashi's eye, "No you don't. We're not going to go there, okay?"

And she hurried forwards and clasped the youth's bony shoulders through the padded cuffs of his jonin vest, giving him a rough shake.

Kakashi's entire frame slackened. His defined jaw lifted and then dropped, bouncing against the undone zipper of his vest. Tsume cupped his face firmly in her hand, fingers pressing shadowy indentations into the stretchy fabric over his masked cheeks. She shook his chin gently. His half-closed eye blinked.

When it opened again the young Inuzaka was startled to see a sheen of dampness there.

"That's it. Stay right here. Just look at me."

He wanted to say something. Kakashi swallowed and noticed that his tongue had somehow been switched with a thick, water-less sponge in his momentary lapse. He nodded and, blinking back the peppering heat that had begun to prick in the corner of his eyes, strained to focus his lilting vision.

Tsume's face swam back at him murkily, iron-bar cheek tattoos standing out like blood.

"You are having a panic attack." she said from faraway, "Everything is okay. You are safe... You need to slow down your breathing if you don't want to pass out."

Kakashi nodded again and gulped. His hand drifted up to hers, still digging into his jawline where she held his face, and he touched the back of it.

Tsume's other hand reached up to touch the feathered silk of his hair where it flopped over his hitae-ate, and Kakashi jolted back, pupil contracting.

"Sorry." she said offhandedly, as if she hadn't just tried to caress him, and intoned, "Breathe."

A sharp knock rapped on the open door of the examination room.

Kakashi's head whipped, an barely noticeable flinch lurching through him as he looked up and saw the tall black and white colored figure standing in the doorway.

"Hatake Kakashi."

The ANBU said. His stance was somewhat duckfooted and he had the mask of a crow.

Tsume stepped back from him and Kakashi straightened, zipping his vest closed. He stepped forwards and bowed, shoulders still rising and falling slightly though he made no sound.

A small scroll that fitted the length of his palm, with ruby red ends, was passed to him.

"A mission? Right now?" the older woman nagged, hands resting on her hips as the crow-masked ANBU departed with a puff of smoke.

The Copy-Ninja nodded. With a shaky flick of his wrist he unraveled the scroll. Silver brow slanting in an unconscious looking frown, Kakashi's stone-dark eye flitted back and forth across the words inked into the thin parchment. He stilled.

Forgot to breathe.

He didn't stop her when Tsume whipped the opened scroll from his limp fingers. She lifted it up against the florescent lighting, scowling as she read.

She grunted.

"You've been summoned." She said as if he hadn't already read what the mission-scroll said.

The words rang in his head, echoing in his ears as if they had been spoken aloud. Kakashi swallowed. Looked up from the floor. He stared forwards, a look of slowly dawning comprehension dripping down his features. It settled, numbly in a thin sheet against his skin. Behind his mask.

 _"Report to HQ for immediate departure. Objective is the completion of previously failed objective."_

"Shit."


	4. Chapter 4

_..._

 **My true love is with me nocturnal**

 **Swampbeasts and crickets**

 **Mimic his calls**

 **In an insect woven bed he yawns**

 **The closing of his eyes**

 **Summons the dawn**

 **Lightening opens the sky**

 **And we can no longer escape it's light**

 **Hovering white smoke fills the air**

 **And everything at once becomes true**

 **Darkness I need you**

 **Hurry up**

 **There is no living outside of you**

 **Darkness I need you**

 **Come hither**

 **There is no living outside you**

~ "Nocturnal" by Orion Rigel Dommisse

...

 _Chrysalis_

...

 _"Ohhh!" the man's scream swung sharply into melody, "I've got me an Aunt Kichi, she-"_

 _The meaty sound of flesh being pummeled echoed loudly from the interrogation room, the accompanying chorus of blood-curdling shrieks ringing all the way to end of the cell-block. Kakashi patted his hands blindly, clawed gloves swiping over the padded dirt. He brushed the rusty girth of a cell bar roughly and clung to it, panting. Slowly, nerves clanging like whooping sirens, he lifted himself to his knees._

 _Half-garbled moans and piercing shrieks rose, melding a discordant chorus out of the totality of the seamless pitch that pressed in on all sides around him._

 _Kakashi scrabbled for his hitae-ate._ _Shoved it up his forehead so hard it nearly fell from his silvery locks. The crouching Hatake opened his Sharingan._

 _Surrounding his tiny pocket of a prison cell, laying in half-strewn positions of incontinence or shuddering torment, the pale blue chakra tenketsu of the other prisoners pulsed weakly, dispersed every twelve strides along the cold dirt. These... These weren't Konoha ninja. Were they?_

 _Kakashi rocked with a low stab of horror._

 _"No." he breathed._

 _"She got just-AHHHRG! Wuh-One titty!" the tortured prisoner wailed, laughing deliriously through what sounded like a mouthful of blood, "L-like a kunai it's pointed! It's nigh-"  
_

 _"Shut up."_

 _And there was the terrible, ripping noise of chains grinding suddenly over trapped skin. The prisoner dissolved into howls of undiluted agony._

 _"Uahhh!-aha! Dah-Double jointed!"_

 _"I'll show you double jointed."_

 _Kakashi fell back against the bars of his cell dazedly. This... This couldn't be real._

 _If his keen senses were anything to go by, the men in the torture chamber were methodically bending each of the inmate's ribs until they broke._

 _Kakashi swallowed. Shook his head._

 _He'd never so much as been captured by enemy ninja. Sure, he'd been schooled on how to resist brutal interrogation techniques... But, it had been the very people who'd taught him those methods who had put him here. It was infuriating. It defied logic._

 _Forcing himself to breathe steadily, to think rationally, the teenager ran through the circumstances that'd brought him to this nightmarish place... And was unable to isolate whatever atrocity he was supposed to have committed. He'd never gotten much in the way of mission details... But, Kakashi exhaled with a razor-edged tremble-Even he had to admit it went against protocol to run away from what was apparently a classified transaction between Konoha and an underground operation in a neighboring country._

 _Yells ripped and tore a gruesome maelstrom, weaving about him with the creeping roll of water as it dripped, bleeding from some unseen place along the ceiling. The teenager squeezed his eyes closed._

 _He'd thought... Somehow, he'd thought Minato-sensei would make it all go away. That, that broad, close-eyed smile and the man's gentle words would sweep him out of danger's reach at the last possible second. Like they always did. As a child, when he'd first started training with the sunny-haired ninja after his mornings were done at the academy, he'd loved to test Minato. Pretending to lose his footing racing up the steps, allowing himself to be tossed dangerously into the air when one of his surprise attacks was a little too successful-Only to clench his eyes and hold his breath, waiting, knowing, that it was only a fraction of a second before arms that were thinner than his father's but just as hard wound around him and snatched him from the air._

 _Safe._

 _Even now, Kakashi found a not so very small part of himself hoping desperately that, at any moment, he would hear the rustle of the Yondaime's cloak approaching or somehow see a flash of brilliant yellow in the darkness._

 _How had this happened?_ _He-Kakashi shivered suddenly as the pattering sprays of something wet and a little sticky sounding issued loudly from the interrogation room. How was he going to get out of here?_

 _"So pretty..."_

 _An ice cold hand touched the back of his neck through the prison bars behind him. Kakashi yelped and whirled around._

 _The faintly pulsing lines of a stooped woman's chakra system glowed like a ghostly, azure cobweb back at him from the other side of his cage._

 _"What-", he stammered, "Who are you?"_

 _The woman sidled closer then, cooing. Kakashi shuffled backwards several steps. The sparkling blue glow of knotted chakra routes, just behind the skin of her face-or what should have been there-pressed between two bars shyly. The young Hatake gasped._

 _"Like starlight, you are..." she warbled, "Vestal little kestrel. Would you light on my wing?"_

 _"... Oh." Was all he could manage. Sweat trickled a nervous little stream down the sides of his ANBU tank. The tenketsu around her eyes was, there was no other word for it-shattered. Splintered off into a million frayed tangles that still sparked in a useless ring around the dented crater that was the center of her face. She hovered before him in the darkness, a punctured tracery of ethereal blue._

 _"Would you sing?" she breathed, her voice wavering and soft through the harsh backdrop of gnashing teeth and animal moaning, "Would you..."-_

 _-She lunged forwards suddenly, slamming her weight against the bars with a crash. Uneven fingernails clawed, snicking through the air centimeters from his nose. Kakashi cried out, falling backwards into a puddle in the center of his cage with a cold splash. He whipped his ANBU mask off, panting._

 _"Hey!"_

 _"I can... feel you burning. We can aaalll feel it." she shuddered, wracking in a silent fit that had Kakashi's shoulders lifting in a silent scream, and then she slackened impossibly. He watched in mesmerized disquietude as the faint glowing blue lines of the chakra lacing her fingertips retracted, snakelike over the dirt before him, "So pliable and sweet, pure like honey from the fairest leaf. You have what we had, my darling."_

 _He stared at her._

 _"Ohh," she moaned softly, and he saw the flickering of her chakra as her fingertips danced, tracing the rusty bars between them, "Be safe young heart. So silver, so fine-A_ _re you open for the taking? All we've ever wanted is just to break you to pieces-And a just king knows what a just king knows, but a good nose knows no foes!"_

 _Kakashi's mouth fell open but couldn't say anything. He felt himself blushing in the darkness, a bizarre stab of abasement smoking through him at her words that he didn't understand._

 _"Don't-" he started._

 _The door to the interrogation chamber swung open with a dry clang. Kakashi flinched._

 _He watched through his Sharingan as the luminous outline of two men's chakra networks filed slowly out of the room, the limply sputtering blue of the prisoner's broken body stretched out loosely between them. The entire prison-block grew quiet, the inmates groans slipping into muffled, anxious whines. The woman in the cell next to him left him alone, falling back with a quavery sigh into the recesses of her cell._

 _Unceremoniously, with a crude spit on the man's now silent form, the guards dumped the prisoner in the empty cell at the end of the row. They turned. Walked, casually as if they were ambling down the street off to buy some groceries, down the row of jail cells._

 _The sound of hands folding in the formation of a jutsu echoed. Kakashi bit his lip, kneeling in the center of his damp cell._

 _"Even in the darkest of places," the woman's airy voice whispered over the thudding approach of booted feet, "Still there are things that grow."_

 _And then._

 _"Hold onto your starlight, little bird."_

 _The kneeling ANBU swallowed. The guards stood before his cell. Their gloves whisked and caught in a series of hand-signs, and the door to his cage swung open with a metallic groan._

 _He didn't make a sound when they grabbed him, ANBU mask held stubbornly in his hand as they jostled and yanked him, tugging him through the damp walk past the cells. To the interrogation room. Kakashi tried gamely to keep up, but every time one of his sandaled feet caught purchase on the slippery dirt, one of his arms was twisted and his weight swung out from under him._

 _His heartbeats seemed to be making a rapid track through the junction where their hands squeezed him, flattening the rush of his veins in his arms. His stomach did a nervous turn, and he could smell the sweaty tang of the soldiers holding him so close. He hated their hands, he hated those gloves; always subduing, pinning, or clenching. It was something that'd been happening a lot lately, it felt like. Each time it left him feeling timid and coltish, ready to buck at the slightest approach of one of his fellow organization members for hours afterwards. It was dismantling, humiliating. Why?_

 _He'd never been punished like this before._

 _The two ANBU, each half a decade older than him at least, continued to drag him past row after row of offenders. Kakashi wondered how many of them were Leaf Ninja. If all of them were._

 _They reached the dim glow of the interrogation room._

 _Marched him inside, directly into the center where a powerful spot-light had been leveled. He was shoved to the floor roughly. Kakashi made no noise. He stood up soundlessly. Folded his hands, ANBU mask still clenched tightly in his left, behind his back._

 _"Inmate number 6602183." He looked up, but was unable to make out the source of the dry, clipped voice through the glare of the beaming spotlight being focused on him. It went on, pitiless, "You are in direct violation of Mandate 0079516-Code Blue-Classification Number 3-Section 12-Paragraph 19-Line 7."_

 _A beat of silence._

 _The Copy-Ninja raised his brows. He shrugged helplessly._

 _"I honestly don't know what to say to that."_

 _He squinted. The light continued to batter down on him, casting the shadow of his eyelashes into his own eyes. Already, the strain of it was too much for his Sharingan. He closed it, wavering on his feet dizzily._

 _"May the stenographer please note that the prisoner has behaved unruly."_

 _"What? No," Kakashi said, "actually you see this has all just been a very large mistake."_

 _Any moment._

 _"I followed my orders."_

 _Minato-sensei would find him. He'd clear this whole thing up._

 _"May the stenographer note the prisoner is now openly belligerent."_

 _Kakashi rubbed the back of his neck._

 _"Really, I traveled with my team to the target location to oversee the exchange of the dispensation apparatus. Just like the mission scroll said."_

 _His flawless repetition of the missive's direct orders went unheard._

 _"_ _6602183." The lifeless voice of the interrogator drilled, and Kakashi began to sweat, "You are are in explicit infringement of several official laws and decrees of Konohagakure military judicial conduct and oversight."_

 _He was grasped suddenly by his shoulders and wrists by the two ANBU operatives who'd thrown him into the room._

 _"Hey-"_

 _He jerked reflexively once before settling in their hold. He could still get out of this. No need to panic._

 _The side-clasps along his ribs were unsnapped. Kakashi's grey eye widened._

 _Alarm rang in a whizzing rush through his veins, and his off-white ANBU vest was lifted. It slid from his body, scraping his hitae-ate from his forehead, and was ripped off his head in one devastatingly easy motion._

 _It fell with a hollow flap, mesh-armored plates thumping as they connected with the hard dirt. The lupine mask in his hand had been knocked to the floor. Kakashi stood empty-handed and wide-eyed in the center of the room._

 _He fought the desire to hug himself. Everything about him felt smaller, somehow less solid without the plush weight of his vest. He was uncomfortably aware of the cling of his sweat-soaked tank to every contour of his stomach and chest._

 _He felt naked. No mask, no bandanna, no armor, no weapons._ _Kakashi rolled his lower lip between his teeth. Stepped forwards._

 _"Wait," he said, looking around desperately in an unconscious attempt to make eye contact with the interrogator through the glare of the spotlight, "I'm sure this is a misunderstanding. If you'd just let me-"_

 _"Oh, will you shut. The fuck. Up."_

 _Kakashi blinked, stunned._

 _And was instantly brought whooshing down to what felt like the height of his five-year-old self. The harsh tone of his father's drunken slur that'd pricked awful beads of heat behind his eyes and sent the inside of his belly drooping somewhere between his knees-It was so close it could have been his dad speaking to him from the past. Kakashi found himself nodding weakly. He wanted to scream._

 _Dancing colors twisted out from the ring of shadow hemming in his sight, stretching and collapsing like the neon petals of some spectral flower. The longer he stood here, under this intense, dazzling light; the harder it became to see. The now vest-less ANBU was fiercely aware of his own heart chugging as if he were sprinting up a steep rise._

 _He was abruptly turned, marched from the light._

 _Kakashi gasped as the two ANBU jammed him into the rough, grainy wood of a man-sized X. The sudden contrast between the piercing stab of the spot-light, and the totality of the darkness disoriented him. He started twisting his body, trying instinctively to back into the circle of light, but the guard on his right yanked his wrist and delivered a crushing blow to his cheek._

 _They wrestled him against the wood. Tiny splinters punched into his cheek through the thin fabric of his mask. His wrists were slammed into the unsettlingly warm and slick grasp of twin manacles emblazoned with rust. They tore the sensitive skin of his wrists through his gloves. They teenager made a high, startled noise and gasped._ _The X was slippery with blood; almost soggy. The sludgy mud that was the floor slopped over his toes. It smelled like the sick tang of fear sweat, urine, and the heady stench of blood. His breath was a skipping record of his own fright. Everything was happening so fast._

 _One of the ANBU, his mask fashioned after the brutish grimace of a boar, laughed._

 _"He sounds like one of those baby kittens we found under the storage sheds out back that one time. Remember," his pale boar mask turned to the painted crocodile grin beside him in the spotlight, "the mom had left them all to die."_

 _Kakashi flushed._

 _Before he could make sense of this cryptic askance, their hands were on him again._

 _A loud tear of ripping fabric, liquid and irrevocable sounded behind him. Cold, damp air crawled over the bare flesh of his back ticklishly. And, quite suddenly it was like the last time, just like on his last mission. His comrades had turned against him. He... He wanted to use his Sharingan._

 _The Copy-Ninja bit his bottom lip_ hard. _The thinnest of moans slipped out._

 _For a moment that seemed to invert in on itself and roll around for a torturous length of time; they laughed._

 _He wanted to close his eyes. To close his eyes and make this all go away. But it didn't matter because he was submerged in the seamless dark._

 _"Yeah, he does."_

 _Tears had begun to dribble a slow path down the young man's cheek from the closed seam of his Sharingan. He cursed Obito silently._

 _"Prisoner_ _6602183." The corpse-like voice intoned from behind the spotlight._

 _"We crushed their skulls under our feet." The man behind the boar's face was saying-And then there was a gloved hand, fingers snicked into the raking hook of claws. It ghosted over the uncovered skin of his back, tracing the fragile ridges and indentations of his spine. Kakashi shuddered and gasped, completely unprepared for the intimacy of the sliding brush. Something like electric sparks juddered through his shoulders and stomach as he jerked, twisting his hips away just before the hand reached his pants._

 _No. Not-_

 _-Kakashi found himself spinning a frantic sort of trapeeze within himself, searing under the intrusive touch. He couldn't even remember the last time someone had touched his back since Rin had healed a messy cut that'd managed to land right between his shoulder blades. He'd shivered then and he shivered now. Some elusive and netted current of his mind reeled. He had expected pain. This-He squeezed his eyes shut against the audible gulp he made as another hand joined the first. They drifted, ticklish and wrong, over the smooth skin of his belly and chest._

 _"S-"_

 _"I can still remember the little mewling sounds they made..."_

 _The realness, the closeness of the man's voice was overpowering. Kakashi could smell the fish and rice the man had eaten for dinner on his breath._

 _"Pop... pop, pop... pop." The other man made a vile, smacking noise with his lips behind the flat reptilian stare of his mask._

 _Kakashi shivered so hard he could hear it in his own breath. It felt like the man was speaking right into his ear._

 _"Mmh!"_

 _The waistband of his trousers shunted a few inches down on his hips. Kakashi's knees knocked together and he fell, the entirety of his weight shooting suddenly to his captured wrists. Pain lanced through his arms as the metal dug further into his skin and his shoulders roared with agony._

 _"Gah!"_

 _A glacial, stinging emotion that was too complex to identify as simple embarrassment crashed through him. There was the laughter again._

 _Obito's tears started gushing._

 _Kakashi jerked like an animal in his restraints. He could feel the inching crawl of his pants as , no longer held up by the protruding ridge of his hips, they slid further down the tight curve of his bottom. He, he was almost_ naked _._

 _The stifling unreality of it all had his head swimming._

 _"_ _Prisoner_ _6602183." The interrogator said again, "_ _Your age."_

 _He blinked through the crusty film of blood that'd smeared all down the side of his face from where his cheek had been pressed to the wood breathlessly._

 _"What?"_

 _The question caught him off guard._

 _"S-Sixteen..."_

 _The sound of his voice was small, blunted to his own ears._ _Where was Minato-sensei? This, this didn't make sense. Kakashi shook his head, bangs whipping the narrow bridge of his nose through his damp mask._

 _"Then sixteen is the number of lashes you will receive."_

 _Lashes?_

 _Kakashi's eyes widened as he faced the darkness, bloody wood wavering before the hot puffs of his terrified breath. He had to get out here._

 _"Damn," the gruff voice of the crocodile whistled behind him, "You must've really done something to piss him off."_

 _He almost didn't catch the words because the chafing caress of the boar's gloves had begun to brush small circles over the thin skin stretched between his hips._

 _The Copy-Ninja froze; what felt like a bucket of ice spilled over him. He arched away from the hands instinctively, unthinking-_

 _-And gasped when he accidentally ground himself against the creased, rough fabric of the boar's pants. His own had jerked down with the sharpness of his movement. The hem of his underwear hung from him. His ass was completely bare. The ANBU rocked against him. Pinched a buttock._

 _"No!"_

 _And Kakashi jerked away, tensing against the wood, ears burning._

 _Laughter. The boar gave him a stroke over his ass that was so gentle it didn't make sense. A scream burst and smoldered inside Kakashi's chest. He squeezed his eyes closed, but it never got out._

 _There was a loud, ear-splitting snap of displaced air suddenly from behind him. The two soldiers tested their whips with languid relish, stretching the leather with an audible, creaking twist. And suddenly, everything felt so very tenuous and uncertain._

 _"Not sure he heard you." the reedy voice of the crocodile scoffed._

 _No... He didn't mean..._

 _He jumped when one of the whips smacked the dusty floor inches from his left foot. Cringed into his restraints._

 _"I said," the boar clicked his tongue with an accompanying flick of his whip, "You must have done something really stupid to piss him off like this."_

 _Kakashi swallowed a shaky breath of air. Something in his heavy-lidded gaze seemed to retreat inside himself as Obito's eye leaked a steady stream down his cheek. As if he was afraid he knew the answer already._

 _"Who?"_

 _The boar laughed._

 _"Who do you think, idiot-_

 _-The Hokage of course."_

 _And then the lashing crack of the whip was blasting over the skin of his naked back like living fire. All of the air inside Kakashi's lungs erupted from his chest with the force of the blows. Under the savage bluntness of the pummeling whip, and the brutal crush of the man's words, he couldn't breathe._

He couldn't breathe.

"Kakashi?"

There were tight bands of iron clamping down on his ribs. His heart was sprinting.

"Were you listening?"

Sitting across from the Yondaime in a bustling, brightly lit cafe on the outskirts of River Country; Kakashi looked into his former sensei's clear blue eyes. Nodded wordlessly.

Minato frowned. He looked down at the steaming cup of ginger tea between his palms. He seemed to be debating internally.

"You looked far away." Was all the man finally said.

"Sorry." he tried to say, but his voice had grown thinner inside his mouth. His own tea, a safe green, sat before him untouched.

He felt more than saw the blonde's eyes scope him out.

"I was listening, sensei." The silver-haired boy said. Dutiful. Withdrawn.

He'd been deliberately selected. A list of Konoha's most valuable jonin had been presented to the council; months ago apparently. The candidates had been judged across a number of fields; ranging from the average number of weapons they carried on their person to the number of times they relieved themselves on any given day. The young ANBU wasn't sure when, but his old sensei had volunteered him for consideration.

It was clear the man meant had meant it to be a surprise.

After all, why wouldn't the two last living members of Team Minato be happy to spend the next two weeks attending the Annual Conference of Nations together?

It was an honor. A distinction of merit. A time to "catch up".

For Kakashi; it was simply a living nightmare. He zeroed in on the pace of his breath, trying to adjust to the flooding sensation of being in free-fall without giving himself away. His stomach felt pinched. His hands hadn't been able to stop shaking since he'd looked up into those, once-so-familiar sky-blue eyes.

"I was thinking," the Yondaime said, the excitement of the upcoming events brightening his face again, "after dinner we could explore River Country's historical sites. We-"

"-I have a mission."

 _"Report to HQ for immediate departure. Objective is the completion of previously failed objective."_ The words flashed across his vision like dancing knives.

The Hokage blinked, a small let-down expression peeking through the man's tranquil visage for a rare half-second.

"Right." he said, and the tips of Kakashi's ears flooded with lava, his solitary eye flinching at the syllable, "Well, maybe tomorrow would be-Kakashi, what? Are you okay?"

Minato's brow raised and then fell in a knot. He leaned over the table, azure orbs widening in dismay. Kakashi, with a dark stab of horror, realized, quite suddenly, that he was crying.

 _How could you?_ The boy thought wildly, _How could you make me do this?_

"Y-Yeah," he said, rising unsteadily from his chair, "I just uh... I've got to use the bathroom."

He wobbled away, the boisterous chatter of the cafe's patrons muffling thickly in his ears. He swallowed, hands shaking, chest tight. Stumbled, almost desperately, through the bathroom and into a stall. He slammed the door shut, flapped down the seat-cover, and collapsed. He-He couldn't do this.

 _Sensei..._ he thought, and the word was an incision. Deep and cutting. Kakashi gasped, his world crumbling around him. Obito's eye leaked steadily; he shoved up his hitae-ate and tore down his mask. His breath spilled out in uneven huffs.

How could the man be so cavalier? So... Didn't he care at all?

Kakashi made a small, unplanned noise that caught in the back of his throat. Let his forehead fall against the icy metal of the stall door.

He was doing it _for_ him. He-

 _"You must've really done something..."_

The memory surfaced again; white-hot, suffocating. Kakashi's hands balled into fists. They knuckled into the watery mesh of his silver lashes, grinding roughly. As if he could erase the nightmarish cloud of recollected shame and terror and pain that was sweeping through him with sheer, brute force.

 _I thought..._ Kakashi choked. Inside he was falling; endlessly falling.

His young, wiry frame shuddered, and wave after wave of stifled, breathless sobs tore through him like the spreading glow of a burn. His lips pulled back, teeth bared in the crux of a silent scream.

 _I thought you loved me._

...


	5. Chapter 5

*WARNING* GRAPHIC MATERIAL AHEAD. RATED M. READ AT YOUR DISCRETION*

...

 **Daylight**

 **In bad dreams**

 **In a cool world**

 **Full of cruel things**

 **Hang tight**

 **All you**

 **Nothing like a big bad bridge**

 **To go burning through**

~ "Acid Rain" by Lorn

...

 **Blue moon**  
 **In the rain**  
 **I wanted to say**  
 **I need you**  
 **But I felt so**  
 **In the way**  
 **Of you**  
 **I'll try not to be**  
 **So blue**

~"So Blue" by Majical Cloudz

 _Chrysalis_

...

Dawn broke over the Land of Waves like a weeping painting, pale pink dissolving into dusky grey.

Minato snuffled deeper into his pillows. The night before had been filled with introductions and the beginnings of what was sure to be an inexorably tedious two weeks of political ingratiating. It was also supplemented by several, thoroughly debauching shots of the renowned vintage of Nami no Kuni.

On the hour. Every hour. From dawn to dusk... Minato sighed wearily into the covers.

He'd been warned that there would be a disparity in culture.

He just hadn't anticipated it to have such a steep alcohol content.

"Rrright." He groaned, still laying face first in the cushions. His entire head ached like a rotten tooth. His insides were tossing as if they fancied themselves a small tempest. Was he still drunk?

The young Hokage lurched up onto his elbows suddenly; back jolting ramrod straight. His watering blue eyes widened in sickly realization. No, sick. He was going to be sick.

Minato scrabbled madly from the sheets, rolling bodily from the plush nest of pillows and blankets that was the sea-side hotel's finest king-size bed, and out onto the floor like a wobbly legged babe.

He reached blearily for the nearest object he could and yanked it towards him. Just in time for an indubitable geyser of regurgitated alcohol and h'orderves to spout from the depths of his being and splatter noisily into the bottom of what appeared to be a large decorative marble vase.

A very expensive large decorative marble vase.

Minato sunk further into the floor with a groan.

"Mistake." he croaked weakly, forehead falling with a thump to the plush carpeting, "I made a- _hurp_ -a mistake."

The last time he could remember drinking so much Jiraiya had held his hair back for him as he puked. All the while giggling drunkenly himself at the novelty of a grown-ass man having such "finely feathered bangs". The sentiment had been sweet, no doubt; but if the blonde Hokage could recall, it had also been the honorable toad-sage who'd tossed a bag over his head and had forcibly wrestled him into what must have been the most seedy, poorly-funded brothel in all of Fire Country that precluded his having gotten sick at all.

Allowing himself a brief moment of immobility, Minato smacked his dry lips and allowed the fuzzy warmth of the carpet to seep into his cheek. His thoughts swirled inside his skull like the trapped eddies of a landlocked tidal pool. As wild as last night had been, he knew it could never come close to the wellspring of perversion and iniquity that went hand in hand with a night out with Jiraiya.

Flailing not a little pathetically, Minato began to drag himself towards the bathroom.

It was a shame Kakashi hadn't been there with him last night. The boy had slipped off, slinking into the shadows of the contrastingly dark and neon-lit streets below like an apparition before Minato had even received their summons to the Palace.

Minato winced.

His bladder was so swollen he felt pregnant.

And, even worse than that somehow... Somehow, through the ever-present rings of red circling the last Hatake's sunken eyes, the barely perceptible transition of the youth's finely muscled frame from lanky to almost frail, and the boy's deepening silence - He was failing him.

He couldn't put his finger on it, but somewhere, deep down, he was beginning to feel that things were going wrong. And it was slipping further out of his hands with each passing day, with each chilly half-glance of the silver-haired teen.

It was starting to wear on him truthfully. This exponentially building unidentifiable weight that layered over his head like some slowly fattening rain cloud.

Minato groaned. Raked his knuckles across his pinched brow.

Stumbling a little as he drifted, not a little clumsily, to his feet, the Yondaime stubbed his toe powerfully on the edge of the nightstand.

He bit down on a sharp curse under his breath and proceeded to hop valiantly across the lavish room to the small, neat alcove that was the bathroom the two of them shared. Why it was solely in his quarters he didn't know, but he was nevertheless relieved not to have to interrupt whatever fitful sleep his old student might be attempting in the room adjoining any time he needed to take a piss.

Which, if last nights extracurriculars were anything to go by, it might just be a slightly more than often occurrence.

Feeling distinctly grateful that his old student wasn't there to see his undignified campaign across the room's polished wooden floors-Who in Kami's name had thought it a good idea to put an umbrella stand right there?-Minato spared a moment to wonder again at where the pale-haired young man had slipped off to last night. Rubbing a sore spot on the side of his head that he didn't quite remember obtaining, he settled fingers that felt like thick, fuzzy sausages over the bathroom's cold silver doorknob.

And found it to be locked.

Huh. That was weird.

The Hokage blinked groggily, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and pressed an ear to the dark, seamless wood. The faint hiss of running water whispered back to him quietly from the other side of the sealed room. Minato grumbled inarticulately to himself as his impossibly full bladder throbbed in angry protest.

"Kashi," he yawned around the boy's name, rapping his knuckles lightly against the wood as he leaned into the door, "That you?"

There was a soft, startled noise. The sound of bare skin scrabbling over wet tiles.

Minato frowned. Leaned closer into the wooden frame. Sniffed into alertness.

Something wasn't right here...

"Hey."

No answer. Minato jostled the doorknob. Pushed down an illogical wave of nearly acidic concern.

No need to freak out. He was sure everything was fine. Kakashi had probably just gotten back from his mission. There was no reason to...

"Hey." he spoke again into the crack between the door and the frame, blue eyes shifting over the white-painted wood, "Everything okay in there?"

Ragged breathing.

A high, thin sound that could have been the half-audible note of an animal whining in pain.

The Yellow Flash's cerulean eyes widened.

 _Something's_ wrong _._

"Kashi." the childhood nickname slipped out and he rattled the doorknob again, standing straighter now, "It's me... Let me in."

An indiscernible feeling of dread began to pool somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach. Why wasn't the boy answering? The Hokage shifted on his feet, feeling strangely anxious.

"What's going on?" He hated the tense sharpness of his voice, but it was all he could do to conceal the faint tremor of fear that quivered around his vocal cords.

"Kakashi."

No response.

"Kakashi."

Silence.

Minato screwed his eyes shut and drew in a slow, forcefully steady breath. When he spoke next it was with all the iron authority of the elected leader of the Shinobi Village Hidden in the Leaves.

 _"Open the door."_

There was only the watery sizzle of drumming water as a reply.

Before he could stop them, a thousand warring images of his long-loved student flashed before his eyes: hurt. Kakashi eyeless; Kakashi, his limbs mangled and torn-juts of pearly bone breaking through the boy's snowy skin. Oh, Kami.

He'd always been the sort to suffer in silence. The Yellow Flash could count on both hands and feet the number of times when, as a young genin, the troubled Hatake would hide an injury - only to be found out, grey eyes shining with hurt and the most heartbreaking of guilty looks, and gently bullied into reluctantly letting his sensei treat his wounds.

Minato squared his shoulder against the wood. Braced himself, blonde brow furrowing. He prepared to launch himself bodily against the barrier separating him from his oldest living student.

"If you don't open this door in the next three seconds, so help me I'll-"

-Only to have the solid scope of the bathroom door swing open unexpectedly into the flat of his face.

The Yondaime leaped back nimbly, just barely missing a clean break to the nose. What he saw when the door cracked open made his heart lurch from his chest to his throat.

The last living Hatake stood in the sliver of the doorway less than a hands breadth from the Hokage.

His slim face was pale and maskless. Young. Bare in a way that made a bizarre rush of heat pepper through Minato's skin like creeping fire and the muscles around his throat constrict painfully.

Just how had he failed to notice?

Kakashi, the young man standing eerily still and somehow vacant before him, wet swirls of hot mist billowing out from behind... There was no other word for it.

Kakashi was beautiful.

Minato swallowed thickly. His hands, as numb as if they were papery leaves, fell uselessly to his sides without him meaning them to at the exact moment the young man's piercing dual-chromatic stare swiveled up to meet his own gaze.

There was a hollowness there... He'd never seen before. Not even when the boy's father-

\- "Kami, Kakashi what happened?" The words burst out before he could finish the painful comparison.

Something wasn't right. And...

Blue eyes trailed helplessly from the breathless, stilted cant of Kakashi's bruised lips down the sleek angle of his similarly bruised jawline, down the purpled column of the boy's throat to the small indentation above the teenager's left collarbone where tiny droplets of water were pooling.

Air rattled out from the Hokage's lungs in slow, burdened gust.

And it didn't make sense.

How a face could be so damning.

Kakashi tore his eyes away, hiking the fluffy corners of his pristine towel higher up on his shoulders. Crystalline droplets of water arced from the toss of his shaggy locks, thickened to a deep gun-metal grey by the water. Minato couldn't stop staring at the sleek, exotic line of the teenager's cheekbone.

The feathery paintbrush of silver-white eyelashes, downcast. Clumped with dew.

"Where did you get those bruises?"

His voice felt thin, even to his own ears.

Kakashi started to brush by him, refusing to look at him.

"Hey!-" Minato grabbed the boy's wrist without thinking.

The resulting whimper that rang out, taut and brokenly tremulous, burned him. Minato stepped back instantaneously, skin chilling to ice in horror. He'd never heard...

He'd never heard Kakashi make a sound like that.

"Wh-" he started, blue eyes wide, stomach somewhere around his knees.

"Bathroom's open."

Was all that was uttered gruffly in reply. And then Kakashi had slipped right by him, leaving nothing but displaced air and a fine trail of watery mist swirling in his wake.

Minato blinked dumbly after him, stunned.

The door separating their two rooms shut forcefully, rattling in it's frames.

Face half-frozen in a dismayed frown, the Hokage pivoted slowly and looked back into the cloudy bathroom.

Both the floor and the walls were damp, sleek and beaded with wet, the tiled floor shrouded with used towels.

Watery pink smears of what could only be blood dirtied the pale fabric.

...

...

 _"No mistakes this time."_

 _Was all the explanation Heron gave as Kakashi handed over the pile of his collected weapons and uniform shakily._

 _Iron, chakra-binding manacles closed over his wrists with a harsh, metallic snap before he could fully withdraw them. Kakashi winced, and the two faceless ANBU on either side of him chuckled almost inaudibly._

 _Almost._

 _Heron's gloved fingers clamped over his jaw with enough force to bruise. Tilted his chin up until Kakashi had no choice but to look into the merciless aquiline gaze. Kakashi forgot the need to breathe. He was painfully aware of the airy flimsiness of his yukata as one sleeve slipped down a half-raised shoulder. The only fabric separating his bare skin from the humid air just outside the daimyo's palace. He thought they might be behind the western gardens somewhere, but-_

 _"I said..." and there was a threatening glint behind the mask's slitted eye-holes, accompanied by a rough shake of the boy's chin, "No more mistakes."_

 _Kakashi tried to nod and found that he couldn't. He swallowed weakly and looked away._

 _"Right." he whispered._

 _"You know I'm fully within my jurisdiction to kill you?" The broad-shouldered man was growling, "If you pull any funny shit like the last time..."_

 _Kakashi mumbled. Another forceful jerk to his face._

 _"Yes sir?"_

 _"Yes sir."_

 _More chuckling from his fellow ANBU. Kakashi's cheeks burned and he breathed out shakily when Heron released his face in a sharp gesture of disgust._

 _"Hell..." And the older man turned away with a contemptuous shake of his head, "This job gets harder every time."_

 _He turned back around and tilted his head dangerously at the two still quietly laughing ANBU._

 _"What?" he snapped, and they jumped at the unbridled anger in his voice, "You think this is funny? It'll just as well be you next time..."_

 _'Look at that face...' The man behind the bird's mask ran a gloved hand over his short-cropped hair wearily, 'Kenshin's gonna tear him apart."_

 _Fear tangled stickily through the Copy-Ninja then, clumping unevenly beneath the thin layer of his skin._

 _Why? Why was this happening? What sort of mission was this?_

 _But, before he could come up with some sort of stability in a parody of an explanation, he was being pulled forwards by the manacles clamped icily around his wrists._

 _Heron was still shaking his head. The ANBU laughing._

 _"Come on." The mission-captain grunted, leading them stealthily through what appeared to be a hidden door in the palace walls, "Let's get this done with."_

 _Kakashi had no choice but to follow._

 _With each timid step of his bare feet along the plush, extravagant carpeting, he began to feel more trapped._

 _Was this really happening?_

 _It seemed like a hazy sort of dream, the kind where you run and run for hours in a maze of your own mind only to discover, when there was no exit, that it had really been a nightmare all the while. He followed after Heron's angry march numbly, head swarming with a thousand unvoiced thoughts. The ANBU stalking threateningly at his sides had finally grown quiet, as if they too had noticed the stifling claustrophobia of the narrow hallway._

 _"Just this way."_

 _They turned a corner sharply, and then they were facing a dead end. At the tail of the discreet passage, a heavy mahogany door stood ajar. The soft flickering pulse of candle-light glowed secretively from within._

 _Kakashi's eyes widened and his knees locked without him meaning them too._

 _"Uhn-" The small frightened noise spilled from him before he could stop it, as the full realization of what was about to happen hit him. He started to shake his head, silvery-white locks lifting, and he tried to step backwards._

 _Wait._

 _Two pairs of uncompromising hands clenched firmly around his elbows. Heron entered the dimly lit room, his steps heavy and unspeakably morose. The ANBU dragged him forwards._

 _Wait, he wasn't ready. He didn't want to do this._

 _Kenshin was reclining imperiously on a thickly cushioned chair. The wood was dark like the door. Inlaid with gold and what could only be ivory._

 _Kakashi's breathing was beginning to shallow, his heart a fluttering, nervous pulse in the back of his throat._

 _When the older man saw him a slow, syrupy smile unfolded over thin, overly moist lips. The man's dark eyes danced delightedly down, up, and then down again Kakashi's yukata-clad frame._

 _Disgust and something he couldn't rightly identify at first burst in a stinging cloud somewhere deep in the teenager's gut._

 _Kenshin chuckled. A raspy, too-full sound that made the tiny hairs along Kakashi's forearms raise. He fought back a shiver, but the smug gleam in the import-connect's gaze told him that it did not go unnoticed._

 _"Well, now..." The heavy-set man drawled, reed-like fingers toying with the thread of the armrest, "This is a remarkable improvement."_

 _And then, 'You didn't say his face could put a porn-star to shame."_

 _That... That was the word._

 _Shame._

 _Kakashi's stomach retracted. He stared somewhere hollowly just over Kenshin's balding head. Stared hard at a fine edge of the fine blue wallpaper that was peeling._

 _Please..._

 _"Bring him over." And there was a wetness to the words that betrayed the saliva building in the man's mouth. His dark eyes were moving over Kakashi again, roving._

 _Feeling stiff and brittle like ice, Kakashi felt his legs move as his arms were pushed forwards. Anxiety whirled in a sickly tang up from his stomach to the dry pad of his tongue, filling his mouth with a bitter taste._

 _He was jerked to a halt with both of his thighs less than an inch from Kenshin's crotch. The grainy fabric of the man's pants brushed his skin through the papery edge of his yukata. Kakashi's ears so hot they might have been blistering. He breathed raggedly, forcing himself to hold still with all the fiber of his being._

 _He jumped unconsciously when Kenshin lifted a hand, brought it to the collar of his loose robe. The gloved fingers of his teammates clenched tighter around his biceps, locking him into place reflexively._

 _The sound of his own breath was painfully loud in the suddenly airless room, and he was desperately aware of everyone's eyes on the uncovered skin of his face._

 _Please, no this wasn't happening._

 _"My, my..." the words curled into a sneer across Kenshin's grinning mouth, "What intriguing expressions you have."_

 _The hand on his collar began to lower, so softly, so slowly he almost couldn't track it. It came to a threatening rest atop the loose half-knot holding Kakashi's yukata closed. Without meaning to, Kakashi looked down through the submissive cant of his fluttering silver lashes. Watched the hitching rise and fall of his exposed chest and abdomen dazedly, almost from within a distant corner of himself. The softly dancing light of the candles played along the milky expanse of his skin teasingly, casting it in a warm, burning glow one moment and abstract shadow the next._

 _Kakashi bit his lip. But couldn't look away._

 _He sensed Heron turn away from them all suddenly in the corner. And that solitary action buried him in an icy dread._

 _He'd never even kissed a girl..._

 _"I'm going to enjoy you."_

 _Kenshin's words were a verdict. They hung heavy over him, heavier than the manacles they'd placed on him. And to Kakashi's mortification he realized his entire body was shaking._

 _Daddy-The thought was illogical, useless. He caught it as soon as he thought it, but it wasn't enough to stop the tears from building like a furnace behind his eyes._

 _Kenshin's thin fingers were incongruous to the rest of him. But they were nimble just the same._

 _They untied the belt to his yukata. It fell open, whispering softly against his sides. Kakashi's body jolted belatedly, he rocked a little on his heels, stunned. He gasped and then forgot how to breathe as cool air flooded his skin._

 _Kenshin's hands were on his naked hips. The man let out a low noise of appreciation. Dark eyes slid greasily up and down his exposed front and Kakashi felt a strange tingling build between his legs. It was so intense, so penetrating, he started to lower his manacled wrists to cover himself without thinking._

 _The ANBU reacted savagely, one of them grabbing both of his forearms in one hand and yanking them up to the level of his head. The other forcibly tore his robe from him, ripping it so hard the fabric split over his arms and was yanked away from him cruelly._

 _Kakashi made a sound but it was overwhelmed by the impromptu cackling of the two soldiers holding him._

 _Soldiers who were supposed to be his teammates. Who... They were supposed to... They..._

 _Kakashi sobbed dizzily in embarrassment. Pressed his forehead helplessly to the bound clasp of his wrists held aloft before him._

 _"Please..." he whispered, his voice so small he could hardly recognize himself._

 _Laughter._

 _He sucked in air when Kenshin's hands twisted his hips to the side slowly, then back around._

 _"P-please..."_

 _"Please, what?" Kenshin's voice belied his enjoyment fully. He twisted Kakashi's lithe hips to and fro again. Kneading them into a reluctant, quivery roll between the slick grasp of his skeletal fingers._

 _Kakashi whimpered and squeezed his eyes closed when the coercion of the movement caused the most intimate part of him to move lightly. His mouth was frozen in an airless gasp, his lower lip trembling._

 _"Please, I just wanna go ho-ome." His voice broke on the last word with a childish sob, and his entire body jumped when Heron stormed out of the room, slamming the door closed behind him resoundingly._

 _Kakashi felt like he was going to be sick. He-_

 _-Kenshin struck him powerfully across the cheek. So hard he was thrown from the ANBU's crushing grip and tossed to the floor bodily. All of the air whooshed out of his chest when his ribs struck the wooden frame of the bed on the way down. Kakashi whimpered in terror, curling into a ball, and tried to roll onto his back against the side of the bed._

 _He watched two pairs of booted feet draw back rapidly in alarm a second before Kenshin's flowing blue robe clouded his vision._

 _The man swung his leg back powerfully and brought it forward slamming, once, twice, five times into the unprotected meat of the teenager's belly._

 _"Gu-Ahhah!" Kakashi cried out, spittle dripping from his lips. His heart was a disjointed drumming in the net of his ears. He fought to open his eyes, brow screwed shut in anguish, cheeks hot with the wet of his tears, but Kenshin's hands had already closed in a choking vice about his neck._

 _Kenshin brought the boy's forehead down hard on the wooden bed frame. Twice. So hard the echo rang out the still half-open door, chasing after the retreating heels of the two frightened ANBU as they ran from the scene in silent horror._

 _Kakashi slipped in and out of consciousness, his vision swimming like a fragmented stream through the flicker of his blood smeared lashes._

 _And then he was on his back, falling through air._

 _He head bounced off the pillows, body crashing to the mattress as Kenshin swung him by his neck onto the wide surface of the bed. The covers were harsh, scratchy against the silk of his skin. Kakashi's feet kicked blindly, heels burning as they rubbed against the rough bedding._

 _But, Kenshin was already on top of him, and he was so scared and so hurt he- A crude hand jammed itself between his legs and squeezed. It began to scrape and roll, plundering hungrily. Kakashi screamed in surprised pain, a humiliated sort of terror making him quake; but the hand wrapped like a cord around his neck moved to bury itself in the mess of his hair. It balled into a mean fist, yanking his head back at an agonizing angle._

 _"Like that, huh?"_

 _Kenshin's breath was a sour wet cloud that puffed stickily over the raw skin of his face. Kakashi gritted his teeth and twisted wildly, but he kept forgetting his wrists were bound. One of his nostrils was clogged with snot, his eyelids thick and watery with the stream of his tears. It was hard to tell his breath apart from his sobs. And, but Gods, did it_ hurt _._

 _He'd never been touched this way. This-_

 _-The hand between his legs grabbed him fully and Kakashi struggled to find his voice, entire body jerking like he'd been stung._

 _"STOP! Nngh," he cut himself off with a whimper, sobbing fully now, "Don't! Stop! Stop! Stop, please!"_

 _Kenshin didn't stop._

 _"Sto-"_

 _The words snagged in the vacuum inside his chest when Kenshin kneed him in the ribs and then flipped him over. The man settled his bruising weight heavily over him, jamming his knees hurtfully into the inside of the boy's thighs, forcing his legs farther apart. Kakashi's eyes widened. Ice splintered in his veins, and inside he was tumbling. Swooping down to some irrevocable point of darkness._

 _"NO..." he mouthed the words as Kenshin shoved his face deep into pillows, brows drawing together in a crush of defeated agony and humiliation._

 _"Unf-" Kenshin grunted like an animal, one hand clawing ravenously around Kakashi's groin, the other fumbling for the zipper on his own trousers. He panted hoarsely in the boy's ear, belly swinging like a hairy, oily bag of meat against the youth's taut spine._

 _There was a tense moment of silence, as the import-connect struggled to align the Copy-Ninja's slender hips with his own heavyset girth._

 _Tears sparkled in Kakashi's suffocated vision, blinding him further even as Kenshin pressed the boy's face deeper into the tangle of sweaty pillows and sheets._

 _He managed a final, broken supplication._

 _"Ple-ase... Ple-he-hease..."_

 _And then something infinitely fragile and incomparably precious inside him shattered into a thousand untraceable fragments._

 _Kenshin shoved his way inside him and began to pump madly, driving away the finest slivers of Kakashi's sanity with each selfish, grinding thrust._

 _Kakashi was beaten back._

 _Far back._

 _He retreated to a semi-space within himself, a place that wasn't really the same as existing but close enough that it wasn't dying..._

 _It wasn't till Kenshin pulled out from between his limp legs, hot and sticky with blood, sweat, and something else that was already growing cold and hard against the fragile bruising that was his skin now, did he return somewhat._

 _Kakashi laid there. Still. Silent._

 _Hardly breathing._

 _As Kenshin curled a hand loosely now about the boy's neck and turned his face up to steal a mushed kiss from the his bleeding, broken lips, the man spanked a satisfied palm across the firm, bloody curve of Kakashi's buttocks triumphantly._

 _The silver-haired youth flinched a second later._

 _The tears had stopped coming a while ago. They stood out on his cheeks and chest like broken constellations. He stared unseeingly before him, heavy lids almost blinking once. Twice and then they closed._

 _There was a thin rattling noise somewhere far in the back of his throat that could have been air moving..._

 _Could have been his soul leaving._


	6. Chapter 6

...

 **Symmetry**  
 **You must work in symmetry**  
 **You must earn their empathy**

 **Symmetry**  
 **You must work in symmetry**  
 **You must earn their empathy**

 **Down down cities fall down on me**

 **The final chrysalis**  
 **Self-controlled consciousness**  
 **Now it feels imminent**  
 **Done for your benefit**  
 **Eat right out of their hand**  
 **Its concaved all your glands**  
 **We're encouraged to forget**  
 **Preference to be force fed**

~ "Empathy" by Crystal Castles

...

 _Chrysalis_

...

"And these are the backup generators. See how they're set against the perimeter? They're wired to come on within a span of twenty-seven seconds in event of a power breach."

Vesna, the daimyo's personal body-guard drolled flatly from beside him, gesturing with a small jerk of her chin to the bulky green and tan boxes that hummed next to the alabaster walls of the palace compound. Kakashi nodded belatedly.

"In River Country we play host to a bustling tourist sector." she glanced at him askance, her jade eyes flashing inscrutably, "Consequently. That's left us open to a whole diversification of underworld activity. So, as you can imagine, when it comes to the daimyo's defense; preemptive is the name of the game."

"Mm."

The sweltering sunlight seemed to be hammering down on him from where it hung, aloof and smarting in the arid, cloudless sky above.

He dragged a gloved hand through his tousled, sweat-damp silver locks; saw that it was trembling ever so slightly, and slipped it down into his back pants pocket as casually as he could.

Vesna noticed, her slanted eyes visibly tracing the path of his hand with unconscious predatory attention. Much like an animal whose senses were honed to pinpoint the finest hint of weakness.

Her jade eyes flashed in poignant sad understanding, chased quickly by a glimmer of sheer pity.

Vesna turned away sharply. The hard line of her shoulders was tense.

She said nothing. Merey continued walking.

Kakashi tottered after obediently on stiff, wobbly legs.

"That's enough about the Palace defenses today." she said tonelessly, then, "Come with me. There's something I want to show you."

Not looking back to see if he was following, she ambled slowly across the well-tended grass and onto a silvery path that crunched beneath the hard plane of her boots as she stalked. Kakashi paused only briefly, looking down at the strangely opalescent walk, and found that what he had first mistaken to be gravel was really a fine crumble of broken sea-shell fragments.

For some reason this struck him as incalculably sad.

A waste somehow.

He followed after her dutifully... It was strange. Ever since... Ever since that night, his head felt like it was some tiny, bobbing balloon floating along after his body tethered by an ephemeral string.

Sort of like he was always two steps behind himself.

Kakashi shook his head weakly, sweat-raggled silver locks flopping stickily into his squinting eye not covered by his hitae-ate. And, instantly regretted it as the quick, unplanned motion brought fiery spikes of pain stabbing up through his neck and into the base of his skull, resounding to the pulse of his heart against the contusions swollen along his cranium.

He weaved a little on his feet and expelled his breath unevenly.

Vesna glanced back at him perfunctorily. Her piercing green eyes slid away inscrutably.

"Almost there." was all that she said, and she lifted the faded white bar to a cast-iron gate, half-submerged by a row of overgrown hedges.

Kakashi blinked dazedly. It took him a moment to find his voice.

"Where..." he croaked, "Where are we?"

She looked at him wordlessly. Yanked at the grating and swung the gate open with a dry, metallic creak. Distantly, he could hear the faint sounds of waves lapping against the shoreline, seagulls cawing, and children giggling as they played.

He found himself wondered murkily how strange it was that he'd already been here four days and had never once seen the beach.

He guessed he probably wouldn't get a chance.

"After you." She dipped her head, short plum fringe tossing a little with the angular movement. He filed unsteadily by her, uncomfortably aware of the way her green eyes flickered over his body as he did.

Pushing his discomfort aside as easily as dropping an empty box at his feet, the last Hatake focused his attention on his surroundings.

They seemed to be in a secluded garden of sorts, ringed by towering hedges and shaded by a crooked, ill-tended tree with dark leaves and grey, scabby bark that was peeling where it stood, silent and untouched by the breeze in the corner of the square plot. Kakashi blinked, an eerie coolness tickling his qi, and he frowned.

"What-" he started to say, but was forcibly cut off by a powerful sweeping kick to the back of his knees from behind.

"Oof!" he fell heavily upon his side, still ripe with the deep bruises Kenshin had given him, and his lips drew back from his teeth behind his mask as all the air was knocked out of him roughly.

In some faded alcove in his mind, warning sirens hummed lowly, and he knew he should be scrambling to regain his footing.

But he was struck immobile by a sudden, sweeping wave of clashing nausea that rose up like an overflowing tide in the back of his throat.

Kakashi curled into a haphazard ball, sandals dragging thin patches of dust from the uncared for grass as he instinctively drew his knees to his chin. He clasped thick, heavy fingers together in a frail mesh along the back of his skull, burying his face between the shuddering crook of his elbows. He might have whimpered but his ears were swimming and it was hard to be sure of anything other than the fact that he hurt.

Vesna stepped easily towards his prone form. Settled her stance over him purposefully, the silhouette of her skull sliding briefly across the burning ball that was the sun.

The toe of her boot prodded his shoulder and he found himself rolled onto his back smoothly.

Diluted fear began to swirl in murky, acidic bubbles within him dilatorily.

Kakashi blinked up at the shadowy frame of her face, and it was then that he realized he was crying.

Slow cool tears dribbled tiredly from both his eyes. It hurt so bad... He couldn't get up. He...

What if she-

-The half-formed thought clattered away uselessly, and a surreal barrage of hellish images clanged through his mind, overwriting his vision briefly.

 _Kenshin. Grinning smugly. Trailing the dry scrape of his knuckles down the bobbing line of his choking throat. Closing greedy fingers harshly over him, burrowing them deep into the soft, uncharted skin of his protruding hips. Plunging his_ -

-Kakashi choked around a sob that bouyed up into being in the back of his mouth, mingling sickly with the razor tang of stomach acid.

"N-No!" he coughed, finally finding his voice, "Don't touch me! Don't-"

And then she was descending on him. Kakashi cried out weakly, his entire body flinching, but there was nothing he could do to stop her. He was trapped, worthless, incapable of anything, he-

-Two thin, powerfully compact arms folded over him gently.

"Shh... Shhh."

She gathered him carefully into a warm, soothing embrace. Cradled the bleary pulsing of pain that was his skull tenderly against her breast. Stroked the downy tufts of his sweaty hair tenderly against his bruised temples.

Without really meaning to, the Copy-Ninja allowed his aching body to be tugged softly onto the crossed cushion of her legs. She cocooned her powerful body around him, and began to rock him gently.

His lungs felt full to bursting, smarting with the heat of holding back his sobs. His entire frame shook mightily. And he was hyperventilating, eyes shut closed tightly, hiccuping.

"Shh..." her words were as light as a breeze, blowing over the sore, hot skin of his cheeks soothingly, "Easy now... I'm sorry."

A fragile broken wail slipped out of him, and she drew him closer to her heart protectively. Planted a motherly kiss to the top of his head and petted it in kindly, smoothing his wayward white-silver locks.

"Wh-What-"

But he couldn't get the words out. He was sobbing too hard. She rubbed warm palms up and down the length of his arms. Tsked softly under breath.

"I'm sorry I hurt you child." Her voice hummed deep in her chest, resonating warmth in waves through his downturned face where he'd buried it in her neck, "I had to make sure my suspicions were correct."

"Y-you?" He seemed to have lost the ability to speak clearly.

In some dim way he knew he should be embarrassed, angry even, at her for knocking him down and making him cry. But it all seemed like too much effort somehow.

And besides... he couldn't remember the last time anyone had held him like this. It felt... _Safe_.

An unfamiliar notion.

"I know." she said simply. Gravely, "I know what happened."

The dams broke at those four soft words. Kakashi whimpered frailly and turned into her fully then, shaking fingers digging into her shoulders, the protective warmth of her skin. She stroked light brushes against the shuddering of his spine maternally, settled the scoop of her neck and chin over the curve of his skull, and tugged him in even closer. She swayed them both side to side as he wept brokenly into her chest.

And she held him that way for a long time. As the buttery beams of sunlight glittered brightly through the leaves of the old, decrepit tree. Carefree leaves tumbling freely across the grass around them whimsically. The routine, familiar sounds of the kitchen steaming and clanging into life as the Palace staff began to prepare dinner wafted over them from across the fields rhythmically. And she held him even still.

Finally, when it seemed like he had no more liquid in his body to siphon for tears - When the hurt, angry, confused, and terrified knot of shame and degradation had been somewhat mollified within him. He collapsed in her arms and allowed her to continue to rock him.

"How?" he managed raspily, "How did you know?"

Instead of answering immediately, he felt her body grow stiff. Something deep and powerful flared like a torch within her qi, radiating in a fiery pulse of heat from the pit of her chest. Kakashi's eyes widened and he drew back to look up at her face.

But she wasn't looking at him.

She was staring straight at a thin line of barely visible pale stones that peeked out from the dirt and grass baldly. How had he not noticed them before? Stones like that... They could only be...

Graves.

The silver-haired teenager gasped suddenly. Jerked his fearful, mismatched gaze back up to the stony set of her face. His hitae-ate lay artlessly on the earth beside them.

She breathed out a slow, painfully measured breath shakily. Carded her fingers through the soft plush of his hair absently, and strangely enough he found he didn't mind.

"Are those..." but he couldn't finish the words. A terrible thought loomed dark and viscous above him now like a burgeoning cloud.

" _Kenshin's victims who didn't escape_."

She looked down at him meaningfully. And there was such a pain, such a plummeting gulf of agony it bordered lunacy in the acidic green of her slanted eyes, Kakashi's lungs froze with ice.

"My sister is one of them." She said tonelessly, and after a moment she added, "She died protecting me."

Kakashi had to look away from the fire in her gaze. His soft, uneven gaze drifted along the silent, unforgiving stones. He swallowed and the movement rubbed the rawness of his throat against itself fiercely.

All of a sudden he felt like he was going to cry again. Like he was going to cry and never be able to stop.

She stopped him by clutching him savagely to her breast, pressing the hot skin of his cheek to the cold, steady drum of her heart.

"I will not let him take you." She whispered steadily.

And then, almost factually.

"I am going to destroy him, Kakashi."

He glanced back up into her icy green eyes again.

And, found that he believed her.

...

* * *

...

** _Just a short chapter for now. I couldn't leave him like that. Seems like Kakashi's not as alone as he thought he was... Thank you for reading. **_


End file.
